Lilly Shifted $21 Billion In Untaxed Profits Overseas

At the same time Eli Lilly received hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks awarded to the company over the past decade by the state and local officials in Indiana, it was shifting billions in untaxed profits offshore. Lilly is among six large pharmaceutical companies that avoided paying over $7 billion in taxes to the U.S. Treasury last year by shifting profits overseas. The drug companies have been shifting ownership of their patents and trademarks to countries with little or no corporate taxes according to Bloomberg. They are among 83 U.S. companies that have stockpiled $1.43 trillion in untaxed profits overseas. General Electric Corp. was the largest tax avoider, shifting $108 billion in profits overseas. Lilly shifted $21 billion abroad compared to Pfizer, which shifted $73 billion abroad.

Adding further insult to injury is the fact that these drug companies charge Americans higher prices for their drugs than any other country in the world. That's largely because big Pharma has bought off the politicians, who allow them to deliberately charge us more than a reasonable fee for prescription drugs, and our absurd laws which permit drug companies to market prescription drugs to the general public, even though only licensed physicians are suppose to be making decisions regarding the prescribing of the drugs. A large component of rising health care costs are attributable to rapidly increasing drug prices. While these companies sell their drugs to the people of other countries at discounted prices, Americans pay punitive rates to drive profits for these companies. Drug price costs in the United States have shot up more than 110% during the past 10 years.