Film Says Corporate Tax Avoidance Clouding Modern States

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-05/film-says-corporate-tax-avoidance-clouding-modern-states.html


A still from the documentary film "The Price We Pay" by director Harold Crooks.

While the practice of corporate “inversion” may be generating headlines in the business world, a new documentary argues the larger issue of tax avoidance has become a major subversion of the global order.

“The Price We Pay,” which makes its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival today, suggests that the ability of corporations and wealthy individuals to keep their cash beyond the reach of public treasuries has upended the working of liberal states while exacerbating income inequality. The governments’ inability or unwillingness to act, never mind organize a coordinated global response, means the situation will probably get worse, the film argues.

The timing of the documentary’s release couldn’t be more fortuitous for the filmmakers. So-called tax inversions, in which U.S. companies take a foreign address to lower their tax burdens, have become an increasingly popular maneuver -- and a hot political issue.

Thirteen U.S. companies have reincorporated abroad since 2012, and nine more plan to do so, including AbbVie Inc., which said in July it would buy Dublin-based Shire Plc for $55 billion, and Burger King Worldwide Inc., which agreed to buy Canada’s Tim Hortons Inc. last week. U.S. President Barack Obama has called inversions an “unpatriotic tax loophole” and ordered a Treasury Department crackdown.

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1. OK, this I've got to see.