The corrosive effects of that trend were detailed in The Times yesterday by Alex Berenson, who examined the fallout of the Orwellian-named American Jobs Creation Act of 2004. Pitched by tax-axing lawmakers as a way to generate cash for new hiring, it allowed American companies to bring foreign-held profits back to the United States in 2005 at a discount of up to 85 percent off the normal tax rate. Some 100 companies repatriated about $300 billion, avoiding about $90 billion in taxes.Our good Senators, Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl supported this massive giveaway. Rentier Posted by James Zellmer at July 25, 2007 9:59 PM | Subscribe to this site via RSS:But instead of hiring more workers, many of the participating multinationals had mass layoffs, especially drug companies. Pfizer, the world’s largest drug company, repatriated $36 billion at the discounted rate, while laying off 8,000 employees in 2006 and announcing layoffs of 10,000 more. Eli Lilly and Schering-Plough also repatriated billions while laying off thousands. Technology companies did the same. Hewlett-Packard, for example, repatriated $14.5 billion in 2005 and laid off 14,500 workers. In some instances, the corporate tax savings were more than enough to cover the severance costs and other expenses of the layoffs.
