from the Wall Street Journal, The Corporate Tax Political Divide

‘Why is the tax code making it better for foreign companies to invest in the United States than U.S. companies?” That was the pungent question posed by Pfizer Chairman and CEO Ian Read in an interview last week with this newspaper. Washington has no good answer, and President Obama shows no inclination to reform the worst system of corporate income taxation in the industrialized world. So Mr. Read’s Pfizer, currently located in New York, is considering a merger with Dublin-based Allergan. Basing the combined company in Ireland would free up more cash for shareholders, employees and research.

And yes, moving the business overseas would ironically make it easier to invest in the United States, thanks to the insane tax burden the Treasury now applies when U.S. firms want to bring profits back from overseas and invest them at home.

Mr. Read was speaking in general terms and not discussing the particulars of the potential merger his firm is now discussing with Allergan, but he neatly explained the competitiveness problem faced by U.S. companies. He noted that after paying Irish corporate income taxes, a firm based there still retains roughly 88 cents on each dollar of profits, which it can choose to invest in the U.S.

But if a U.S. company makes the same dollar in Ireland and pays the same local tax to Irish authorities, its 88-cent after-tax profit gets whittled down to 65 cents if the money is invested in the U.S. That’s because the U.S. is one of a small handful of tax collectors worldwide that demands to be paid even after a domestic company has already paid the overseas territory where it made the money.

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