The Intellectual Property Holding Company: Tax Use and Abuse from Victoria's Secret to Apple [Hardcover]

This book investigates how some corporations have avoided tax liability with intellectual property holding companies, and how different constituencies are working to stop them.For the first time, an intellectual property and tax scholar collaborate to investigate the use of intellectual property holding companies in both the United States and abroad. The book tells the stories of Gore-Tex, Victoria's Secret, Sherwin-Williams, Toys-R-Us, Apple, Microsoft, and Uber, explaining how these companies create phantom structures in, and move their patents and trademarks to, tax-favored jurisdictions to avoid paying taxes.For the first time, an intellectual property and tax scholar collaborate to investigate the use of intellectual property holding companies in both the United States and abroad. The book tells the stories of Gore-Tex, Victoria's Secret, Sherwin-Williams, Toys-R-Us, Apple, Microsoft, and Uber, explaining how these companies create phantom structures in, and move their patents and trademarks to, tax-favored jurisdictions to avoid paying taxes.Many companies that have become household names have avoided billions in taxes by 'parking' their valuable intellectual property (IP) assets in holding companies located in tax-favored jurisdictions. In the United States, for example, many domestic companies have moved their IP to tax-favored states such as Delaware or Nevada, while multinational companies have done the same by setting up foreign subsidiaries in Ireland, Singapore, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. In this illuminating work, tax scholar Jeffrey A. Maine teams up with IP expert Xuan-Thao Nguyen to explain how the use of these IP holding companies has become economically unjustified and socially unacceptable, and how numerous calls for change have been made. This book should be read by anyone interested in how corporations - including Gore-Tex, Victoria's Secret, Sherwin-Williams, Toys-R-Us, Apple, Microsoft, and Uber - have avoided tax liability with IP holl³<