Inversion: What are your thoughts?

It's very capitalistic, which is pretty American...

America has been a (relatively) non-conducive environment for businesses in a number of ways for a long time. Probably a better idea for Obama/Congress to try to make the environment a better place for business rather than finding ways to block companies from leaving.

It's unpatriotic to deliberately make the American tax code crippling. Companies have a moral duty to protect shareholder returns. The congress should dramatically lower corporate tax rates.

Current tax code makes it highly inefficient to repatriate cash by taxing it at the statutory 35% rate. Many of the large multinationals hold the vast majority of their cash overseas and with the current low interest rate environment its cheaper to borrow to fund dividends/share repo/general corp purposes than it is to repatriate. If you look at some of the recent deals done, the tax synergies are worth up to 25% of purchase price.

I love it because I'm all about starving the beast. I hate it because you probably ultimately do nothing but shift the burden of feeding the beast.

Companies are just economic agents doing what makes the most sense from a financial and economic standpoint. Saying that they have the ability to act "patriotically" is giving them too much credit. They just respond to incentives, and as long as the US doesn't change the incentive structure these firms are presented with (most commonly discussed is lowering the corporate tax rate), then corporate inversions will keep happening.

As an econ and poli sci major, I find this especially fascinating. I 100% believe that corporations should act in the best interest of their shareholders. If that means inverting to a country with a lower tax rate, so be it. The onus in this situation is on our government... Until we have competitive tax rates, there is absolutely no incentive to stay American. However, inversion is detrimental to America as a whole, as this tax burden will be passed on to the American people because there's absolutely no way the government just decides to spend less money, thus increasing all of our taxes. Essentially the government needs to do something because on the macro scale, this will have negative effects on the country.

I think the most unpatriotic thing here is the fact that we have a government that allows for a loophole-driven tax code, no accountability for the enforcement of their laws, and an abounds of hypocritical stances. I don't necessarily have a statement about what level of influence that corporations or Wall Street should have on our officials, but don't chastise them and then accept tons of money in donations (and then refuse to hold them accountable for their actions you are always complaining about). Our government is creating the unpatriotic situations that then allow for a predicament where the best thing for the shareholders is counter to the best thing for the tax base. I don't blame corporations one bit. It's always a question of who answers to who. If a CEO has the ability to reduce taxable income (as long as it is legal), they are under a fiduciary duty to their shareholders. Congress is under a responsibility to the taxpaying base that they serve, so of course it is their duty to help taxpayers get the best return on their investment. I would argue that the taxpayers are the ones that are getting screwed by an unpatriotic set of government officials that obviously could care less.

If you are based in Holland, sell your drugs at the same prices you sell them in Holland. Yes, they pay more taxes, we also pay the highest drug prices in the world.

I wouldn't go as far as to say its unpatriotic; however I do think that companies using foreign tax haven strategies is kinda a raw deal for america, depending on the company (tax rate being high is a totally separate issue). I understand the whole company is incentivized to do so argument to a degree but that incentive should be closed. Most of these companies benefit from tax dollars in every single facet of their business: workforce (public education, gov't student loans), supply chain (infrastructure), technology (gov't grants/tax breaks), IP protection (legal system / patent office), etc. So they fact they are getting all of these benefits at the tax payers expense while not contributing their fair share (again as it currently stands and relative to companies not employing this strategy) I do think is wrong and should be stopped. Maybe lowering corporate tax rates and things of that nature should be part of the package that ends these types of strategies but regardless I'm not a fan as it stands today.

So many Americans magically become Irish whenever they are asked about themselves, why is it so shocking that Corporations have started to do the same?

I don't think anybody likes it but I can't fault them for trying. I do a lot of stuff to optimize and minimize my federal and state tax liability. It has probably reduced my state and local income taxes by about 20% over not optimizing over the years.

We need a better tax code. We need to do a better job of taxing economic rents while leaving productive activities alone.

I do think everyone, including corporations (which are now people, apparently) should pay something in taxes. Most people pay 10-20% of their income as federal tax. I don't think it's such a big deal for the Feds to have a flat corporate tax of 15% and rewrite it to make it harder to move income offshore. We then raise LTCG and the dividend tax to 25% (minus an inflation index for LTCG) to reflect the lower tax rates enjoyed by corporations.