The extent of Pfizer’s Covid tax avoidance schemes is worth reading in full, if anyone is interested.
From the article:
Pfizer, originally an American company, will most likely funnel the billions it receives from governments for its vaccine through tax havens – just as it does with its other earnings. These include the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Ireland and Delaware. For example, in the Dutch company register we can find a Dutch LLC, AHP Manufacturing, that belongs to Pfizer and falls under a Luxembourg-based holding company, Pfizer Shareholdings Intermediate SARL. That corporation’s statutes, in turn, show the involvement of corporations in Gibraltar.
Many of Pfizer’s activities outside the US fall under a Dutch corporation in Capelle aan den IJssel: C.P. Pharmaceuticals International CV (CPPI). CPPI has more than 350 holdings world-wide, including dozens in the tax havens Ireland (25) and Luxembourg (26).
In the fiscal year 2018/19, CPPI turned over a phenomenal 40.3 billion dollars (some 36 billion euros), and booked an enormous profit of 11.9 billion dollars (10.7 billion euros). And that with just 220 employees. By comparison, 1,200 people work at the Ahold Delhaize headquarters in Zaandam.
CCPI’s profits over the past decade vary from 10 billion dollars in 2010 to nearly 20 billion dollars in 2017. Added up, its profits amount to the astronomical sum of 169,5 billion dollars over ten years.
A regular guest in tax havens
Pfizer makes no secret of the fact that it pays considerably less tax proportionally than your corner bakery. Its 2020 annual report notes an ‘effective tax rate’ of 13.5 percent (p. 63). The annual report of the CPPI corporation in Capelle aan den IJssel, states that it had an ‘effective tax rate’ of 14.7 percent over 2018/19. In other words: CPPI paid 2 billion dollars in tax. The previous year that had still been 17.4 percent, amounting to over 3 billion dollars in tax.
That sounds like a handsome contribution to the Dutch treasury, but unfortunately that is not the case: these numbers refer to what its foreign subsidiaries pay in their country of origin. A few pages further down, it becomes clear that CPPI pays nothing at all in the Netherlands. The annual report states: ‘In accordance with Dutch tax laws, CPPI CV is considered transparent in regard to Dutch taxes, and is therefore not subject to Dutch corporate or dividend taxes.’ The 10-billion-euros profit is therefore tax free. All profit can be paid out as dividend to the shareholders, without being taxed.