The chief executive officer of Cisco Systems Inc. appears to love Canada, so much so that he’s considering investing in what he calls “the easiest place in the world to do business.”
“The easiest place in the world to do business is Canada. Their prime minister gets it. They make it easy for me to invest and do acquisitions there; they have a great education program and they have a great immigration policy.”
Globe and mail: Cisco eyes Canada investment: ‘The easiest place in the world to do business’
Financial Times: Cisco eyes Canada investment
Cisco actually has a pretty neat office in downtown Toronto if anyone has ever been there:
Well, sure. Like many other US tech companies, Cisco racks up huge amounts of cash through price transferring, in the case of Cisco using Dutch and Swiss cover. The result is Cisco’s international earnings are taxed effectively at 5%. They want to repatriate some $63 billion to the US without paying US taxes. Wish I could get away with such shenanigans! No wonder that Congress, in the pocket of wealthy corporations, must predate upon the small and innocent. For details, including numbers, see Bloomberg article:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-28/biggest-tax-avoiders-win-most-gaming-1-trillion-u-s-tax-break.html
Correction: $31.6 billion, not $63 billion. (Am I dislexic?) Here is Bloomberg:
“All told, Cisco has accumulated $31.6 billion in overseas earnings on which it has paid no U.S. income taxes yet, records show — part of more than $1 trillion in U.S. companies’ offshore profits, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In total, almost 90 percent of Cisco’s cash sits overseas.”
Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion. I call it dirty money and prefer Canada not put out the welcome mat to it.
@NothernShrike: Dirty money is gained illegally, like through drug trade. Cisco is a legitimate business that makes money through the sales of their products. Their money is not “dirty” and as far as I am concerned, it is welcome in Canada.
When the US Corporate tax rate is the highest in the World, the motivation is to make darn sure that the US division shows a loss (or minimum profit). I’ve seen transfer pricing at work, and it would take an army with intimate knowledge to find anything incorrect in the transfer pricing mechanisms.
In the case of international Corporations, US won’t see any Corporate tax Revenue unless the rate is competitive against other nations where their divisions exist.
@NorthernShrike
It would appear that Canada is eager to use taxpayers dollars in pursuit of Canadian companies up to these shenanigans:
“Transfer-pricing definitely appears to be a growth industry in CRA audit,” said Rick Bennett, a Vancouver tax lawyer at Borden Ladner Gervais. “The CRA has been upping its resources devoted to audit work in the international context, which includes a lot of different things, but it’s an area that is, with some justification, regarded as one that’s ripe for abuse, and an area they believe they may be able to recover a lot more tax money.”
From Business in Vancouver:
corporate-tax-dollar-grab-intensifies
So, we are getting down to the conclusion. Cisco uses tax havens like Canada in order to avoid paying US taxes. They should be forced to pay those taxes back to the homeland, instead, by sending an army of accountants up to Canada to investigate their transfer pricing practices.
I didn’t want to create a new thread for this, but I thought all of you might like this article if you haven’t already seen it:
FATCA Law is an International Version of Obamacare’s 1099 Provision, a Nightmare for Cross-Border Economic Activity that Is Undermining Investment in America
http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2011/06/20/fatca-law-is-an-international-version-of-obamacares-1099-provision-a-nightmare-for-cross-border-economic-activity-that-is-undermining-investment-in-america/
@Mark Twain I still don’t understand what sort of ignorance and callousness causes Congresscriters and other dipshit officials to allow corporations to get by with structuring, while screwing individuals and families.
Following is a comment I wrote back in May to the article I cited just above (http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2011/06/20/fatca-law-is-an-international-version-of-obamacares-1099-provision-a-nightmare-for-cross-border-economic-activity-that-is-undermining-investment-in-america/)
don’t disagree with the dislike of Congress. Transfer pricing is simple. When the tax rate of USA is highest in the World, everyone will do it.
For large expenditures needed by corps for the US market (although they may have benefits for foreign divisions), charge the expenditures locally US.
For large expenditures needed primarily for European markets, with tiny benefits for US market, charge the expenditures globally.
Repeat, repeat—until US profit is zero and the profit shows up in the European division with the lowest tax rate.
My own $200 million dollar European project was charged globally by the accountants, although its usage in USA was less than 10%.
To question it, an army of accountants would have needed to have traveled overseas to intimately check the books of the parent Company of a large international Company. And when they checked, they would not have had the info to detect it.
Had the Corporate tax rate of USA been less, the accountants would have made different decisions.