Monday, August 17, 2015

The Brooklyn Tax Dodgers

Good Wall Street Journal article on how even the hipster-domiciled Etsy couldn't resist an Irish corporate tax transaction: it set up a subsidiary in Ireland and then loaned that company money to buy its intellectual property, so that future income earned by that property is taxed at 12.5 percent:

While that approach ranks as relatively straightforward in the business of tax avoidance, it has taken Etsy into the realm of legalistic corporate-speak and vague disclosure that its founders long railed against. Etsy briefly described the moves this way in a May earnings release: “Etsy’s revised corporate structure was implemented to more closely align with its global operations and future expansion plans outside the U.S.”

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