Tax Inversions and the Dems Who Love Them

Jordan Fraade, July 25, 2014

Corporations are people, my friend. Just like human people, they will go to absurd lengths to reduce their income-tax liability, and just like human people, they can move to another country if the one they live in doesn’t suit them. So in that sense, when the generic drug company Mylan announced that it was renouncing its U.S. citizenship to become reincorporated in the Netherlands, it was just another example of a growing trend of so-called “tax inversions.” The method is fairly simple: American companies acquire foreign firms, and then reincorporate in those firms’ home countries to take advantage of their lower tax rates.

Business as usual, right? But a bizarrely obsequious piece on the Mylan move by Andrew Ross Sorkin caught the eye of National Journal’s Ron Fournier because of one intriguing detail: The CEO of Mylan, Heather Bresch, is the daughter of a U.S. senator, Joe Manchin.