Oval Office Blame Game

In a refreshing turn of events, the 44^th President has found another demographic to blame some of the country’s woes other than the 43^rd President.

Accountants.

Let me repeat that for emphasis – accountants.

Well, allow me clarify this a bit – he doesn’t hold them accountable for the quagmire in the Middle East, or the scandals de jour at the IRS or Bureau of Labor Statistics, but the community organizer does cite them as a root cause for the wave of multi-national companies doing tax inversions - flipping their corporate address overseas to minimize their tax liabilities.

Following a summit with African leaders, Obama was quoted as saying, “You have accountants going to some big corporations—multinational corporations but that are clearly U.S.-based and have the bulk of their operations in the United States—and these accountants are saying, you know what, we found a great loophole—if you just flip your citizenship to another country, even though it’s just a paper transaction, we think we can get you out of paying a whole bunch of taxes.”

Never mind it was actually law firms such as Skadden Arps that helped usher in this practice, but the double-Ivy League graduate has never displayed a firm grasp of facts that weren’t displayed on a teleprompter. Just prior to this latest diatribe, he previously labeled companies adopting foreign addresses with such unflattering monikers as “unpatriotic ”and “corporate deserters.”

Funny, his own administration helped one $20 billion company do exactly what he is currently railing about.

And here’s how:

As part of the bailout of the auto industry in 2009, Obama’s Treasury Department authorized spending $1.7 billion of government funds to help auto parts maker Delphi Automotive out of bankruptcy—as a British company. While Delphi Automotive Plc continues to operate from the greater Detroit area, the paper headquarters in England potentially reduces the company’s U.S. tax bill by as much as $110 million a year.

So I’ll ask the President this: how is it OK for U.S.-based firms such as Apple to use aggressive tax planning strategies to minimize their worldwide tax liability, but unpatriotic for say, U.S. based-drug maker AbbVie to purchase the U.K. –based firm Shire to minimize its worldwide tax liability?

Apparently the golfer-in-chief sees a difference. I however, do not.

For example, could one be considered unpatriotic if they seek to maximize their 401(k) contributions?

Here’s a novel idea: reform the corporate tax rate to a more competitive level and see what happens. You would think that with an approval rating that is probably at or near his handicap, he would have higher priorities than lambasting the country’s most trusted advisors.

It’s probably a good thing that George W. Bush wasn’t a CPA as well.