Politicians, celebs in spotlight over offshore accounts
BERLIN (AP) — The fallout from a massive leak of records on offshore accounts dragged a growing number of leaders and celebrities into the spotlight Wednesday, with a Bollywood actor, a race car driver and Ukraine’s president among those denying they evaded taxes.
The reports center on millions of documents detailing how the rich and powerful use shell companies in low-tax states like Panama or the Cayman Islands, sometimes giving them fanciful names like “Goldfinger” or “SkyFall.”
The suspicion that such accounts are used to skirt taxes prompted a rush of denials, statements and, in some cases, media blackouts.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was the latest high-profile politician to face scrutiny over the issue, denying he had meant to evade taxes by putting his candy company offshore.
Poroshenko had promised voters he would sell his business when he ran for office in 2014. But according to the reports, he merely moved it secretively offshore.
GOP’s social, fiscal conservatives at odds over gay rights
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Republican lawmakers upset about the Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage have advanced measures in about a dozen states this year that could strengthen protections for those who refuse on religious grounds to provide services to same-sex couples.
The bills could benefit court clerks, photographers, florists, bakers, wedding-hall operators and others who say gay matrimony goes against their beliefs.
For a party already being torn apart by the presidential contest, the state legislative efforts have exposed deep rifts between the GOP’s social conservatives and its pro-business wing. Business leaders worry that such measures will allow discrimination and scare away companies and major events.
So far, only a few proposals have become law. Those include narrowly tailored protections shielding Florida clergy from having to perform same-sex weddings and college religious organizations in Kansas from losing aid.
A far more sweeping one was signed into law Tuesday by Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant, despite objections from some major corporations. It creates a religious shield from government penalties for an array of people and organizations, including marriage-license clerks, adoption agencies, counselors and more than a dozen categories of businesses that provide wedding-related services. It applies not only to those with religious beliefs about gay marriage, but also to those who believe that sex outside marriage is wrong and that sexual identity is determined at birth.
Allergan, Pfizer call off proposed $160B merger
(AP) Top U.S. drugmaker Pfizer and Irish rival Allergan are charting independent futures after scrapping a record $160 billion deal torpedoed by new Treasury Department rules meant to block American companies from moving their corporate addresses overseas — on paper — to avoid U.S. taxes.
The rules issued Monday, aimed at stopping the companies’ “tax inversion” deal, wiped out its financial incentives and rationale for Pfizer Inc., though they had no impact on Allergan PLC.
That led Pfizer and Allergan to walk away “by mutual agreement” on Wednesday. Pfizer, which is based in New York, will pay Allergan $150 million as reimbursement for its deal-related expenses.
It was Pfizer’s third, and most expensive, failed attempt at an inversion, leaving analysts to speculate Pfizer will drop the strategy for good. The merger would have moved Pfizer’s address, but not its operations or headquarters, to Ireland, where it would have paid hundreds of millions of dollars less in annual U.S. corporate taxes.
Tax inversions, in which a big U.S. company buys a smaller one in another country with a lower tax rate, and then moves the combined company’s address there on paper, are a hot issue in the presidential race. President Obama on Tuesday called them “one of the most insidious tax loopholes out there,” adding that Treasury’s new rules are meant to make wealthy corporations shoulder their tax responsibility like working-class Americans.
