It seems American companies are fleeing to Bermuda to incroporate to escape confiscatory tax rates.
Stanley Works, for 159 years a Connecticut maker of hammers and wrenches, is among the latest with plans to become a corporation in Bermuda, where there is no income tax. The company estimates that it will cut its tax bill by $30 million a year, to about $80 million.
Tyco International, a diversified manufacturer with headquarters in Exeter, N.H., says that being a Bermuda corporation saved it more than $400 million last year alone.
Bermuda is charging Ingersoll- Rand just $27,653 a year for a move that allows the company to avoid at least $40 million annually in American corporate income taxes.
I am sure this will be deemed as terribly unpatriotic and self-serving, but I say more power to ’em. I bet those companies and their shareholders and all the greedy tycoons that run them have better ways of spending that money that Ted Kennedy and the ‘fiscal conservatives’ in the House and Senate. Let’s all move to Bermuda and choke off all the government’s assets. Sounds like a plan to me.
The amazing thing is that the reporter and Charles Grassley seem surprised by this. I guess they were not paying attention to the comparative BOOM of the Irish economy as everyone RAN there from other European nations to set up shop because of the comparatively low tax rate. Hell, even France’s Marianne, Laetitia Casta moved out of France to escape high taxes…