Cambridge Intellectual Property and Information Law: The Intellectual Property Holding Company: Tax Use and Abuse from Victoria's Secret to Apple

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 holding companies and how different constituencies are working to stop them.

1. Introduction; 2. The Delaware gift to corporations; 3. The domestic IP holding company's structure and phantom; 4. The scrutiny from the States; 5. Domestic tax haven; 6. Key incentives to created foreign intellectual property holding companies; 7. International structures used by Apple and other multinational companies; 8. Government barriers to intellectual property income shifting and their (in)effectiveness; 9. Foreign tax havens: exploring solutions to intellectual property income shifting offshore; 10. Final thoughts on IP holding companies and corporate social responsibility.