Top Democrat Tries to Stop Burger King From Fleeing the Country to Avoid Taxes

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Burger King is on the run. Perhaps they got a look at Mitt Romney’s ability to avoid paying taxes and they wanted to get themselves some of that patriotic action.

Upon news that Burger King is fleeing the country to merge with Canadian Tim Hortons, Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Sander Levin (D-MI) called on Congress to pass that inversion legislation (Stop Corporate Inversions Act of 2014) already:

“The reported deal with Burger King, an American company, highlights the need for Congress to act with urgency to keep companies in the U.S. rather than moving abroad. We need to seriously examine the reasons behind this reported deal and take steps in the immediate future to prevent further erosion of the U.S. tax base.”

By “inversions”, Democrats basically mean corporations that flee the country to avoid paying taxes. They say this is an increasing problem, and reality agrees as U.S. companies are renouncing their citizenship and going overseas in order to avoid paying taxes to cover their fair share of usage of all things public. Since 2013, 19 companies got the idea to cut and run while still taking advantage of things our tax dollars pay for. Where did they ever get that idea?

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Since 1983, 76 companies have done this. Democrats demonstrated the spike since 2004-2005, with 47 inversions in the last decade:

This is how Republicans show their patriotism — aiding and abetting corporations fleeing the country in order to avoid paying taxes, leaving the little people struggling to pay their mortgage to subsidize the corporate profits of Burger Kings. After all, the non partisan Joint Committee on Taxation determined that the legislation proposed would save the taxpayers almost $20 billion dollars over ten years.

Sarah Jones

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