Hardly the End of the World

Just months after the Obama administration cracked down on mergers that helped US companies skirt domestic taxes, a wave of foreign takeovers is steering more tax revenue away from Uncle Sam.

But no one, particularly those on the political Left, has ever bothered to show how steering more tax revenue away from Uncle Sam is such a bad thing. It is, after all, not Uncle Sam’s money, it’s the money of those business’ owners. It’s also not as if Uncle Sam needs the money, other than like an addict needs heroin.

It’s also not as if Uncle Sam’s crack down on tax inversions—wherein a US company acquires or merges with a foreign company and then moves its headquarters to that foreign company’s more favorable tax jurisdiction—is unexpected. No, as Robert Scarborough, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP Partner, notes,

If you make inversions more difficult, more US companies may simply be acquired[.]

This is an unforeseen consequence that was easily foreseeable.

Still, conspiracy theories aside, the immediate question is, “So what?” It’s not the end of the world that Uncle Sam is losing money that’s not his in the first place. These business’ owners and the managers they hire no better how to use their money, anyway, than Uncle Sam ever can understand.

It’d be better if those folks could use their money here at home, though.

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