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Did you know that “Nike Waffle” isn’t just a shoe? It’s also a tax shelter.
Nike, like companies such as Apple, Dell and Microsoft, has a huge stash of offshore profits that it hasn’t paid U.S. taxes on. We also know that Nike, like these other corporations, has paid little or nothing in foreign taxes on these profits either. And we also know that all these companies have many offshore subsidiaries in tax-haven countries.
Nike’s latest annual report, released earlier this week, shows just how blatant multinational corporations have become in using offshore tax havens to avoid their U.S. tax responsibilities.
Nike reports that its cache of “permanently reinvested offshore profits” ballooned from $5.5 billion to $6.7 billion in the past year — meaning that the company moved $1.2 billion of its profits offshore. Nike also discloses that if it were to pay U.S. taxes on its offshore stash, its federal tax bill would be $2.2 billion, a tax rate of just under 33 percent. Since the federal income tax is 35 percent minus any taxes corporations have paid to foreign jurisdictions, it’s easy to deduce that Nike has paid virtually no tax on its offshore profit hoard.
Nike’s long list of offshore subsidiaries includes twelve shell companies in Bermuda alone, ten of which are named after one of Nike’s own shoes! To wit: Air Max Limited, Nike Cortez, Nike Flight, Nike Force, Nike Huarache, Nike Jump Ltd., Nike Lavadome, Nike Pegasus, Nike Tailwind and Nike Waffle!
Why does Nike want to pretend that its product names live in Bermuda? To avoid paying taxes, of course. When multinationals move their brand names and other “intellectual property” to tax-haven subsidiaries, they can have their subsidiaries “charge” the U.S. parent companies big royalties for using the names. These transactions reduce U.S. taxable income and rob state and federal governments of tens of billions of dollars each year.
You might think that American multinational corporations might be just a little embarrassed by such nefarious behavior. But no, they mostly aren’t. Nike, in particular, is thumbing its corporate nose at the IRS and ordinary taxpayers by making its tax avoidance maneuvering so obvious and having a little fun at our expense.
Frontpage Photo of Nike Shoes via Daniel Y. Go Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0