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Richard Phillips

Why the SEC Needs to Require More Disclosure from Companies

In 2015, Citigroup reported to the Security and Exchange Commission that it has 21 offshore subsidiary companies, but it reported to the Federal Reserve that it has 140. Similarly, Bank of America reported to the SEC that it has 21 subsidiaries while reporting to the Federal Reserve that it has 109. All told, 27 financial firms report wildly different numbers to the SEC v. Federal Reserve.

So what gives and which reporting is accurate? It turns out that SEC has less stringent reporting rules, requiring companies only to disclose “significant” subsidiaries. It defines significant as comprising 10 percent or more of the company’s assets. The Federal Reserve requires broader disclosure, but only for financial companies. A CTJ comparison of the disclosures revealed big banks and other financial firms collectively are under reporting to the SEC the number of subsidiary companies by a factor of more than seven.

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Treasury Department Building

How Treasury Could Take Action to Prevent Inversions

Even as more large companies announce plans to take advantage of the inversion loophole to avoid taxes, Congress has refused to move on commonsense legislation that would put an end to inversions. Fortunately, as outlined in a new letter signed by Citizens for Tax Justice and 54 other groups, there are a number of additional actions that the Treasury Department could take without Congressional approval to stem the tide of inversions.

Although Treasury issued new regulations in response to the surge in inversions in 2014 and 2015, Pfizer’s planned inversion with Allergan demonstrates that the regulations so far have been inadequate to prevent this and similar planned inversions by Johnson Controls and IHS. Perhaps the biggest motivation for Pfizer’s planned inversion is that it could allow the company to avoid an estimated $40 billion in taxes that it owes on the $194 billion in untaxed earnings the company has offshore. Expatriating to Ireland through an inversion will allow Pfizer to avoid paying any tax on its offshore hoard through an accounting gimmick called a hopscotch loan, which effectively allows the new foreign parent company to reinvest its untaxed offshore earnings without triggering the US taxes it would normally owe.

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What Makes Delaware an Onshore Tax Haven

When you think of a tax haven, you probably imagine the far off tropical islands of Bermuda or Grand Cayman, but the reality is that there is a major tax haven even closer to home in the state of Delaware. A new report from Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) explains how one our nation’s smallest states is one of the world’s biggest havens for tax avoidance and evasion.

What makes Delaware a tax haven? First, Delaware is one of the easiest places in the world to set up an anonymous shell corporation. In fact, setting up a company in Delaware requires less information than signing up for some library cards. This means that it is difficult for law enforcement to trace the activities of the anonymous shell corporations to the people who actually own and control them. This is what makes Delaware corporations an ideal vehicle not only tax evasion, but also for illicit activities like drug trafficking, terrorism finance and defrauding the government.

In addition, the state does not require companies to pay any tax on income relating to intangible assets held by companies based in the state. Companies take advantage of accounting gimmicks to shift their intangible income from other states into Delaware in order to take advantage of the zero tax rate on income earned from intangible assets. For example, Toy R Us has avoided millions in taxes by transferring its trademarks and trade names (including “Geoffrey the Giraffe”) into Delaware and charging its subsidiaries in other states for use of its trademarks.

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