Drug Makers Reap Benefits of Tax Break  page: 1  log in   posted
on May, 8 2005 @ 01:30 AM    Any company with profits in other
countries can take advantage of the law, but drug makers have
been the biggest beneficiaries because they can move profits
overseas relatively easily, independent analysts say.  The money
the companies are bringing home has come from many years of
using legal loopholes in the tax law to aggressively shelter
their profits from United States taxes, tax lawyers say. While
the companies' tax returns are private, fragmentary information
about their tax payments is buried inside their annual financial
statements.  Those figures show that the drug makers have told
the Internal Revenue Service for years that their profits come
mainly from international sales, even though the prices of
medicines are far higher in the United States and almost 60
percent of their sales take place in America.  Though the
companies stand behind their accounting, financial analysts and
tax lawyers say that the dru