During the past year, a dozen major U.S. corporations including medica group Liberty Global, Chiquita Banana and Pfizer have started shifting their headquarters and tax base overseas, according to Reuters. Several have re-based their operations to London including Aon Plc, CNH Global N.V., Delphi Automotive, Esnco, Liberty Global and Noble Corporation.
Britain is attractive to U.S. companies because the UK has essentially halted taxing profits reported by UK companies overseas subsidiaries. This means that the companies can transfer profits out of countries where their employees and customers are based into favorable tax havens and bring the money back to Britain without paying any tax.
It is unclear as to whether Congress and the White House will take action to ban the shifting of operations to make use of such tax havens.
