On This Fourth of July, Meet Your Unpatriotic Corporations

[ctsnowman]

Years ago, I noticed that America’s major drugstore chains tend to utilize the same corporate color scheme. Walgreens, CVS, Rite Aid—all patriotic in red, white, and blue. Even regional chains take their identity cues from Old Glory. But this July 4, American corporations—including one drugstore chain, in one recent example—are using tax loopholes to act in the most unpatriotic of ways.

Walgreens, The New York Times reported, is looking to relocate from Illinois to Switzerland, in the process merging with a Swiss corporation and reincorporating itself as a foreign entity. It is, bluntly, an old-fashioned tax dodge, aimed at trimming eleven percentage points off the company’s corporate tax rate. Americans for Tax Fairness estimates that the move will cost US taxpayers more than $4 billion over the next five years. Using a procedure called “inversion,” an American company can reincorporate itself overseas as long as its domestic (US) owners retain no more than 80 percent of its stock. Walgreens, after merging with European drugstore chain Alliance Boots (itself a loophole-exploiter, having moved from the UK to Switzerland itself in order to lower its tax bill), will meet the criteria and legally become a Swiss corporation.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/180521/how-americas-largest-drug-retail-chain-plans-take-4-billion-your-pockets

[randys1]

1. Well isnt that precious...and lets make sure they never pay taxes and, oh crap, i give up

Amazing what we tolerate here, and we tolerate it by voting for wall street friendly, tax hating, rightwing and some dem politicians who succeed ONLY when we are harmed, the more harm to us the better for them.

And we are still tolerating it. take a bow America, you are so fucking stupid

Oh yeah for the geniuses who get mad at me when i say bad things about America, yes I am American and this place is pissing me off

[Loge23]

2. The 4th of July - a paid holiday if you're lucky

Does the 4th of July really mean anything anymore?
Do we still celebrate "freedom" in a country that selectively imprisons 25% of the world's prisoners with a population that is 5% of the world?
Do we really want to celebrate a military that still "fights for our freedom"?
We have a hopelessly inept and corrupt government who could give a holy damn about it's citizens.
We're ceaselessly spied upon by our own government - by an NSA that may even function above our own government!
The corporations that this country - through it's citizens - built, can give two shits about supporting the U.S. All the more for the greedy pigs who "run" them (usually into the ground).

For me, it's a paid day off from my underpaid job, where unqualified, nonproductive fools make 3-10 x as much. Happy, happy.