Skip to main content

Tax skirting by hospital systems?

The issue of avoiding federal taxes is in the news these days with Apple being in the spotlight.  Most of the times big companies avoid paying US taxes by skirting their profits to tax havens.  Healthcare giants can do the same theoretically.  Imagine if there were a health care giant that opens up shop in tax haven islands and then uses the same technique that commercial entities use to skirt their profits out of the country, thereby avoiding taxes.  This is very much possible.  The of shore clinics can be potentially used to complicate the tax return filing system here in US.  I could never understand why a completely US hospital system would like to open up a clinic in Bahamas.  These clinics are portrayed as the global reach of the entity but who do they actually serve.  We never hear about them in press or public.  These clinics are apparently manned by some doctors we never hear about.  How does this system work?  I really don't know.  I think this needs to be investigated further.

Comments

Hussain said…
Big hospital systems do not have to go abroad to save on taxes, most of them already have a non-profit status leading to tax exemptions. Whether that is justified or not (how much charity care do they actually provide) is debatable.

The hospital extensions abroad in the Gulf and Ireland etc. are for-profit entities, and the hospitals have to pay corporate rate taxes, if they repatriate the money being earned there, back to the US. I am not sure whether they decide to park that money abroad in off-shore tax havens or actually bring it back and pay taxes in it (though I doubt the latter).
10:40 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Learning Arduino 1

This holiday season I decided to gift myself some basic electrical components in the form of a Arduino UNO set from Elegoo. I have always had a desire to tinker with electronics and in gifting myself this basic set I am now starting on a journey to quench my inner electrical workman's thirst. I hope to develop this hobby as I move forward and will, from time to time, post about it here on the blog. As the journey moves forward I am sure to run into trouble and issues. But as they say you can not master anything without first being a fool at it, so I have decided to remain a fool at it until I am a little good at it. To start with, I do possess some elementary knowledge in electronics and electronic circuits. I intend to further my knowledge using the world wide web and following some very useful video channels on youtube. I will first start with some very basic projects to familiarize myself with Arduino and basic electronic circuits and techniques such as soldering. Then graduall...
Post a Comment
Read more

Elections 08 V

In the election results of the year 33 former ministers who were closely associated with Musharraf have lost their seats. PML-Q has suffered losses to the seats of those who were stalwarts of the previous administration and were thought to be close to Musharraf himself. the results express more so a disgust and hatred with Musharraf and anything even closely related to him. Otherwise PML-Q has been able to win seats of those members who were not closely associated with Musharraf. So we can safely conclude that this is a an anti Musharraf vote and not a pro PPP or PML-N or ANP vote. In other news the Govt. is now thinking of letting go of the Chief Justice of Pakistan who has been kept under illegal house arrest since November 3, 2007. Aitizaz Ahsan was freed not until the last minutes before election and now Chief Justice's imminent freedom spell something very fishy. What was so important about him that he was not released before elections? What special situation has arise...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pakistan Earthquake

It was terrifying to say the least. We have often heard the proverb being used again and again but this one was a real earth mover. It occurred at about 52 minutes past 8 in the morning while most of our urban population was still asleep in their homes. The jolts kept on coming for about a minute and 10 seconds and then there were lighter jolts in the evening. I was fulfilling my new found glory in the field of gardening when our tractor started shaking like mad. It was literally heaving its huge heavy body sideways like some shaky pendulum.    Then my father called in and told me that the quake had been hard on Rawalpindi and Islamabad. I talked to my relatives there to ensure that they were safe and away from harm's way. Afterwards I switched on the Television. Thus starts my cynicism for the whole event!    The anchor on the TV was so disturbed that he could not even tell the story right. At one point in time he is telling us all the reports fro...
Post a Comment
Read more