oh boy where are they going to run now:
This is from a NY Times piece that is also now featured on Huffingtonpost
Wall Street, Sand Hill Road, LaSalle Street: Some corporate addresses scream money. Then there is North Orange Street, which whispers it.
North Orange, a ho-hum thoroughfare in Wilmington, Del., is, on paper, home to more than 6,500 companies. Many of them are empty shells. They make nothing and sometimes employ just a lone clerk. But all are there for the same reason: to help corporations avoid paying taxes in other states.
And the beauty of it is if you drive a few blocks you can score all the crack you want too!
Critics of the arrangement in Delaware say it cheats state governments out of money. Delaware, these people say, has created its own onshore Cayman Islands. Even the Swiss are complaining, claiming that the United States is letting this homegrown haven flourish even as the I.R.S. pursues offshore shelters.
Defenders of the arrangement — corporate executives, tax lawyers and, unsurprisingly, Delaware officials — rebuff such criticism. Mailbox subsidiaries like the ones along North Orange Street do nothing to minimize companies’ federal tax bills, they say. Corporations must still pay Uncle Sam. Moreover, these people say, many companies are drawn to Delaware for its business-friendly laws and courts, not to save on taxes.
That is certainly the view at 1209 North Orange Street, a nondescript low-slung building at the corner of West 13th Street. This address serves as a tax minimizer for dozens of brand-name companies, among them Dillard’s, the department store chain based in Little Rock, Ark., and Kentucky Fried Chicken, which is part of Yum Brands of Louisville, Ky. All of them, and nearly two-thirds of the Fortune 500, have tax-exempt subsidiaries at this address to reduce their state tax bills.
And here the state is going to hit its servants with an 8% tax cut when there is all this low hanging fruit out there.
In April, a senior official of the Cayman Islands Financial Services Association asserted that Delaware, along with Nevada and Wyoming, promoted tax evasion and money laundering, thus qualifying the United States as a tax haven. Federal officials view the issue as a state matter and are not pushing for changes in Delaware, the home state of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Delaware…home of tax free, well, everything