Oops, Obama Administration Spported Delphi Inversion

Apparently corporate patriotism only matters when President Obama is on the political attack. Otherwise, it’s DC insider business as usual.

Reported by Bloomberg

As part of the bailout of the auto industry in 2009, Obama’s Treasury Department authorized spending $1.7 billion of government funds to get a bankrupt Michigan parts-maker back on its feet — as a British company. While executives continue to run Delphi Automotive Plc from a Detroit suburb, the paper headquarters in England potentially reduces the company’s U.S. tax bill by as much as $110 million a year.

Guess truth and political fiction are the same in Obama-land. And now the IRS is involved and apparently being used to pressure Delphi.

The Obama administration is now trying to rescind the tax benefits of the Delphi deal [Emphasis added] that it helped broker. In June, the Internal Revenue Service told Delphi that the 2009 address change should be disregarded for tax purposes, and that Delphi must pay taxes as a U.S. company. Delphi says in a securities filing that it will “vigorously contest” the IRS’s demand.

“The recent rise in inversion transactions has the IRS and Treasury and the president understandably rattled, so they’re now trying to play catch up,” said Julie Roin, a tax professor at University of Chicago Law School. “They were worried about other things in 2009.”