Friday, September 2, 2016

Liberal Tax Group Urges Treasury, IRS Action Against Gilead on Taxes



A left-leaning advocacy group that says Gilead Sciences avoided almost $10 billion in federal taxes by shifting profits abroad is urging the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service to take action to collect those tax dollars.

The Washington-based Americans for Tax Fairness says the IRS and Treasury should initiate a state aid case before the European Commission to retrieve U.S. taxes.

“Instead of allowing massive profit shifting by an American company and then pleading with EC officials not to pursue collection of unpaid taxes to Ireland, ATF urges the United States to bring its full enforcement resources to bear to immediately investigate Gilead’s profit-shifting tactics so that the correct amount of income is reported—and the correct amount of taxes are paid—here in the first place,” Franke Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, wrote in an Aug. 10 letter to the IRS and the Treasury Department.

The advocacy group said in a report released last month that Gilead, a pharmaceutical company that’s come under scrutiny for its high-cost hepatitis C drugs, dodged U.S. taxes by shifting its revenue to offshore accounts. Gilead’s global revenue has tripled since 2013 when its hepatitis C drugs hit the market, according to Americans for Tax Fairness.

The group’s tax-collection request follows a Justice Department motion filed last month that aims to force Facebook Inc. to provide information to the IRS about its Irish holding company as part of an ongoing investigation.

Americans for Tax Fairness has been pushing for changes to the U.S. tax code to prevent American companies from shifting profits offshore to avoid paying federal taxes.

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