Walgreens flees.

• Author: Hightower, Jim
• Position: VOX POPULIST - Column

How would you react if one of your neighbors announced that while he obviously benefits from having clean water, highways, Medicare, police protection, parks, schools, and other public services, he was no longer going to pay his part of the taxes that make them available?

And what if this neighbor also said he was renouncing his American citizenship to become a citizen of Switzerland because he could pay less taxes there? Not that he was actually moving to that cold country, mind you--no, no, he'd still be living right here in the good ol' USA and still benefiting from all those public services that taxpayers like you and me provide.

Surely, you'd think, this has to be a joke. A person can't really do this, right?

You see, corporations are funny creatures. They don't want to pay their share of America's tax bill, but then they're first in line demanding subsidies, grants, and other special handouts from our government to pad their bottom line.

That's hilarious hypocrisy--but it's no laughing matter, since it means you and I have to pay more to cover their tax avoidance.

Corporate tax dodging has become both rampant and ridiculous. Take an increasingly popular scam called "inversion," which is nothing but a perversion of tax law, business ethics, and common decency. It works like this: By merging with a corporation based in a country with lax tax laws, a U.S. corporation can reincorporate as a citizen of that country and shift its tax obligations there, even though all or most of its profits are made from sales in the U.S. of A.

For example, Gregory Wasson of Long Grove, Illinois, announced that he had plans for all of the above. Gregory isn't my neighbor, but he sounds like a "real" person, so how could he get away with this scam, you ask? Wasson is CEO of America's largest drugstore chain, Walgreens Corporation, the...