Eric Talley, The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Professor of Law; Director, Berkeley Center for Law, Business, and the Economy, UC Berkeley Law
"Corporate Inversions and the Unbundling of Regulatory Competition"
Abstract: A sizable number of US public companies have recently executed “tax inversions” – acquisitions that move a corporation’s residency abroad while maintaining its listing in domestic securities markets. When appropriately structured, inversions replace American with foreign tax treatment of extraterritorial earnings, often at far lower effective rates. Regulators and politicians have reacted with alarm to the “inversionitis” pandemic, with many championing radical tax reforms. This paper questions the prudence of such extreme reactions, both on practical and on conceptual grounds….