Why we have a right to tax deferred off-shore income, beyond allowing shareholders the limited liability of a U.S. corporation, by Steve Shay, building on the analysis of my hero, Charles I. Kingson, in The Great American Jobs Act Caper, http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/taxlr58&div=17&id=&page= (paywall).
“The primary businesses of [the 10 biggest beneficiaries of the repatriation tax amnesty windfall] rest on one or more of: (i) technology patents, copyrights, and trademarks created under the protection of U.S. laws; (ii) U.S. food and drug approvals authorizing access to and assurance to U.S. healthcare consumers; (iii) the internet developed by the U.S. government and transitioned to private hands; or (iv) leases of valuable rights to U.S. oil and gas natural resources. All of these are fruits of U.S. public goods and legal infrastructure developed and maintained with U.S. taxpayer dollars. Yet, these companies have been permitted to routinely use transfer pricing and stateless income planning techniques to pay extraordinarily low rates of tax on vast swathes of their income—and now the plan is to give them an amnesty rate on pre-effective date earnings?”
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