Burger King's Tax Dodge Shifts Bill to You-and-Me Taxpayers

Burger King decided to have it their way and avoid paying taxes in the United States by moving its corporate headquarters to Canada. 


Burger King is only the latest in an onslaught of U.S. companies that are fleeing America -- on paper -- to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, which shifts more tax burden to working American families.  


Many Americans are gearing up to not only hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, but to hold everything and boycott Burger King.  This is one special order that will upset Burger King's  Brazilian majority owners, 3G Capital, which bought Burger King in 2010 and sold stores and cut employees to help its bottom line.  Burger King is merging with a Canadian coffee and donut chain and will claim by corporate tax loophole magic that it is a Canadian company.
 


The 3G partners pocketed the profits instead of investing in and strengthening the business.  Burger King's top line has dipped lower and lower every year 3G has owned or controlled the company.  They returned the company to the public markets in June 2012, and their stock price has increased 100% since then.


This is a typical private-equity takeover deal, about which Americans heard much during the 2012 presidential election campaign as Mitt Romney's former private equity firm, Bain Capital, was in the news.  The private equity outfits target companies which they can pillage and plunder -- taking huge profits off the top for the key principals, themselves, at every juncture, including refinancing -- then return the stripped-down company to the stock market, which at that point likes the lean-looking balance sheet.


The puns are too easy and foretell a whopper of a PR disaster for the crowned burger. 


Links to an online petition and 5 stories:


Petition:  Burger King, reverse your plans to abandon America.


Huffington Post


CNBC


Fortune


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