bloomberg.com: Treasury Unveils Anti-Inversion Rules Against Tax Deals
The U.S. Treasury Department announced steps that will make it harder for U.S. companies to move their addresses outside the country to reduce their taxes, clamping down on the practice known as inversions.
I’m sure there will be a lot of virtual ink spilled over this story, but I can’t help but focus on this line from near the end of the article.
The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated that legislation to curb inversions would raise about $20 billion over the next decade.
According to our friends over at Wolfram|Alpha in 2013 the GDP of the US was $17.08 trillion and government expenditures were $3.746 trillion. So, the government spends about $118,785 per second… Raising $20 billion won’t even cover 2 days of government expenditures. In reality the impact is much smaller than that because the $20 billion will be raised over the next decade.