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Caterpillar’s Swiss unit dodged $2.4 billion of U.S. taxes: Senate panel
Caterpillar Inc avoided paying $2.4 billion in U.S. taxes from 2000 through 2012 by moving profits from sales of replacement parts through a low-tax unit it set up in Switzerland, a congressional panel said on Monday.
In the latest example of a major U.S. corporation’s offshore tax strategies going under the congressional microscope, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations issued a report focused on a complex 1999 restructuring by Caterpillar.
The world’s largest mining and construction equipment maker’s restructuring negotiated a low tax rate with Switzerland for a unit it set up there to book taxable profits from sales of Caterpillar-branded replacement parts made by third parties under contract with the Peoria, Illinois-based company.
“This is a prime example of a tax avoidance strategy, which is costing the U.S. Treasury billions of dollars,” said Senator Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the subcommittee, which has a hearing scheduled for Tuesday on the report’s findings.
Caterpillar makes no replacement parts and has no warehouses in Switzerland, but 85 percent of its parts business’s profits went through the Swiss unit, where the company pays a tax rate of between 4 percent and 6 percent, the subcommittee said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-tax-caterpillar-idUSBREA2U1P720140331
This make sense.
I have tried sourcing heavy equipment parts lately, and am unable to find much in the US. No problems finding parts overseas, though. Parts for large tractors, industrial diesel engines and bull dozers.