Customers are fuming at Burger King’s Facebook wall today. Bad service? Terrible food? Well, that’s not new.
No, they’re upset that the burger monarch is uprooting his international headquarters out of Miami and moving it to Canada in order to lower tax bills.
Here are just some of the comments in reaction to the move, which are getting lots of “likes” from other people on Facebook:
Lame. Same thing just putting a spin on it. I’ve eaten my last whopper.
But make no mistake- the Whopper IS declaring itself to be a Canadian burger (all-Canadian burger) in order to dodge American taxes. This post is DELIBERATELY misleading. Nice try, weasels.
Enjoy your tax loophole, pigs
your headquarters for burger king may still be in Miami but your corporate headquarters for tax purposes will be going to Canada… Boycotting Burger King until i know for sure you are not scamming the People of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Hey, I have an idea. Instead of accusing the King of being anti-patriotic, maybe we should investigate our country’s hellish corporate tax rate?
U.S. law doesn’t simply allow American-based companies to just up and leave like that to get away from our nation’s 40% corporate tax rate. So Burger King did what’s called in the business community an “inversion.” They bought a Canadian coffee company called Tim Horton’s and they are “merging” with them. Oh, and in the process, moving the combined TimHortonBurgerKing HQ to city of Oakville in Ontario, Canada.
My reaction is decidely different from the Facebookers on BK’s wall. I’m not mad at a corporation for leaving the country with the world’s highest business tax. I’m embarrassed that America is that country.
So why is this kind of inversion happening more and more every day?
Well, countries all around the world are lowering their corporate taxes, but the United States remains stuck at 40%. KPMG has a long list of all the corporate tax rates across the world, and the United States is higher than them all. Well, except for the United Arab Emirates. They are the only one with a higher rate then the United States.
Yay. America. Freedom.
A company based in Detroit faces a 40% corporate tax from Uncle Sam. Across the river in Windsor, Canada, a corporation would face a corporate tax of 26.5% — a gap of 13.5%.
As countries all over the world lowered corporate rates, Canada responded and the United States stayed put at their high rate. Back in 2006, Canada’s rate was almost 10 percentage points higher at 36.1%.
Burger King wouldn’t make such a move eight years ago, when the gap was just under 4 percentage points.
I’ve got a free policy idea I’d like to share (maybe I should share it with Marco Rubio’s office since BK is Florida-based.)
Congress should pass a International Business Tax Competition Act. The bill would be automatically lower our corporate tax rate to ensure it was no higher than 10th place on the G20 list of corporate tax rates.
That means our new corporate tax rate would be lowered so it was at the same level as Germany, which is holding down 10th place at 29.55%.
As other countries lowered their rate to become more competitive, our rate would automatically keep pace.
That doesn’t prevent the Congress from lowering it further than 10th place… but at least focusing on the international competition on corporate tax rates, we could avoid at least some of the demagoguery* surrounding lower business tax rates.
I mean, seriously, isn’t there something wrong with this picture?
* hope springs eternal….