Hospitality: Burger King wants to save by mega-acquisition tax – Times Online

Hospitality: Burger King wants to save by mega-acquisition tax – Times Online

Updated 25th August 2014 14:04 clock

Miami (AP) – The American fast food company Burger King wants to take over the Canadian coffee and donut chain Tim Hortons

negotiations. are already underway, the two companies announced at night to Monday. Investors responded enthusiastically: Burger King’s shares rose in premarket trading in New York by more than 16 percent to

In the stock market you know. With the acquisition of Burger King could move its headquarters to Canada, thereby saving taxes. The two companies would have a combined market value of around 18 billion dollars (13.6 billion euros). Of this amount, approximately $ 8.4 billion at Tim Hortons.

The conditions for the merger would have to be negotiated, it said. What is clear already that the investment company 3G Capital will hold as a former Burger King main shareholder, the majority of a merged company.

Together it would bring the company had reported an annual turnover of $ 22 billion and more than 18,000 stores in over 100 countries. Tim Hortons is the largest restaurant chain in Canada and Burger King after the American competitors McDonald’s’weltweit number two in the Hamburg-Bratgeschäft.

Burger King is what the possible takeover all about, the American Treasury cheat to beat. The corporate tax rate in Canada is, according to

data of the economic consulting firm KPMG at 26.5 percent, in the USA there are around 40 percent.

“The United States has the highest corporate taxes in the developed world and they are the only G7 country, clings to an outdated tax system, in which generated abroad profits charged additionally at home, “explained expert Laura Tyson of the University of Berkeley in California.

So far it make the US-laws the corporations relatively easy, the high taxes to go out of the way. The headquarters moved abroad – called inversion – is about permitted, on condition that at least 20 percent of the shares in a merger in the combined company to the foreign shareholders

Although this tax trick is not new, but he is. among increasingly popular. So last sought, inter alia, the banana traders Chiquita and the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to take with this design competitors abroad. The companies migrate normally but only on paper. For works and management can stay in the United States.

If Burger King to get serious with his emigration plans, should the political debate about high corporate taxes and escape before in the United States continues to pick up speed. Founded in Miami in 1954 burger chain is a uramerikanischer classic brand – quasi gastronomic American Heritage

President Barack Obama and many members of Congress, the tax-optimizing Übernahmetrickserei of U.S. companies already long been a thorn in the eye.. But to do something about it, Democrats and Republicans must first agree on appropriate measures. This is well known in Washington not easy.

WSJ article

Communication from the company