11.28.2012

The End of the Dutch Sandwich?

I have written fairly extensively about some exotic tax-avoidance schemes being used by US companies abroad to avoid current obligations at home. Such strategies have attracted increasingly negative attention, seemingly in direct correlation with the increasing fiscal problems the country is facing. In addition, it seems that US authorities are not the only ones paying attention to companies' tax strategies as France recently joined the queue.

This doesn't mean that companies will stop using the Double Irish or the Dutch Sandwich any time soon. Most of the attention they receive ends in settlements with tax authorities; after all, the strategies are legal and are often pre-negotiated. So long as these settlements (plus any legal/accountant fees) remain lower than the tax bill would be without using the strategies, they will continue to be used.

However with more settlements occuring in more jurisdictions, it is probably more appropriate to label these strategies, without any hint of sarcasm, as tax mitigating rather than tax avoiding in nature.

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