Glaxo has $5 billion at stake in IRS row

[54anickel]

http://www.indystar.com/articles/2/109409-7902-031.html

GlaxoSmithKline said Wednesday that the Internal Revenue Service wants it to pay $5.2 billion in back taxes and interest on sales that go back to 1989.

The world's second-largest drugmaker, with U.S. headquarters in Philadelphia, said it will fight the IRS claim on the grounds it has made "adequate provision for tax liabilities."

snip>

"The IRS is saying based on the U.S. sale of drugs that we made more profits than we say we did in the United States," said Sutton. Glaxo paid $1.3 billion in U.S. taxes from 1989 to 1996, he said.

Analyst Christian Wenk at Standard & Poor's in London said, "It's not unusual for companies to locate their production in low-tax countries, such as Ireland, Singapore and Puerto Rico, then sell the products into the United States."

more....

[necso]

1. Evading Taxes

Evading taxes is a central tenet of the new "corporatism". To quote Mussolini: "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power":

Just because the government makes the occasional show of holding some corporation accountable, we should not forget what is actually going on --- the takeover of government by corporate interests, aided by the religious right --- only in this case it is largely by international corporate interests as opposed to national ones. We might hope for a little nationalism from the later (usually in vain), but we can have no such hope from the former.

[ClintonTyree]

2. Two guesses............

as to how this will turn out.

[cthrumatrix]

3. Lets keep an eye on this.....corporate games go unpunished usually