Tim Hortons, Burger King merger fallout: U.S. cracks down on tax inversions

[unhappycamper]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/tim-hortons-burger-king-merger-fallout-u-s-cracks-down-on-tax-inversions-1.2774913

Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew on Monday announced a series of reforms to make corporate inversions difficult, if not illegal.

Tim Hortons, Burger King merger fallout: U.S. cracks down on tax inversions
The Associated Press Posted: Sep 23, 2014 5:41 AM ET

The Obama administration cracked down Monday on certain overseas corporate mergers and acquisitions, aiming to curb American companies from shifting their ownership abroad to shirk paying U.S. taxes.

New regulations from the Treasury Department will make these co-called corporate inversions less lucrative by barring creative techniques that companies use to lower their tax bill. Additionally, the U.S. will make it harder for companies to move overseas in the first place by tightening the ownership requirements they must meet.

"This action will significantly diminish the ability of inverted companies to escape U.S. taxation," Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said. He added that for some companies considering inversions, the new measures would mean inverting would "no longer make economic sense."

Administration officials who briefed reporters could not say how many pending inversions might be stopped by the new rules and specifically would not address whether the rules would block one of the most high-profile moves, an effort that Burger King announced in August to acquire Tim Hortons.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

1. enthusiastic kick.

Gov't has to renew and prioritize efforts to regulate corporations back to size, so that they are participants in national/international life, rather than continuing to allow them the power to buy the rest of us into being their safety net.

Ronnie raygun's de-regulation fest in the 80's set the stage for them gaining omnipotence. (In my non-expert opinion)

[JackInGreen]

2. Good on THAT

But...um...does this mean I can't get a twelver of tim bits in the next few months stateside?

[IronLionZion]

6. Timmy's has been stateside for a while

they have them in upstate NY, probably other places too

[IdaBriggs]

3. Ha ha!

Yeah!

[Dopers_Greed]

4. Any company that does or has done this...

Should just have their rights to do business in the US revoked.

Pretty simple fix.

[cstanleytech]

5. Oh there are many ways to put pressure on companies to behave better

I just wish the government did more of it.
For example right now alot of grocery retailers and walmart is the biggest one that are screwing many of their employees with a combination of low pay and or few hours so imo the way they could address it is via the EBT program.
How? Tell the companies that if more than a certain % of their employees are drawing on EBT that they will be barred from the program.
That might well cause them to start paying their employees a decent wage because thats a minor cost to losing out on the earnings they can get from the EBT program.