Tax inversion

Tax inversion, or corporate inversion, is the practice of relocating a corporation's legal domicile to a lower-tax nation, or tax haven, usually while retaining its material operations in its higher-tax country of origin.

The first inversion in the U.S. took place in 1982, but the practice became common only in the late 1990s, with U.S. corporations seeking to relocate to tax havens such as Bermuda. More recently, because of changes in U.S. law, a second wave of corporate inversions took place by way of merger with companies in lower-tax foreign countries such as Ireland. The issue drew public attention in 2014 when Pfizer proposed to invert to the UK through a takeover of AstraZeneca.