Canada’s Corporate Tax Rates Are Now More Favorable To U.S. Corporate Tax Rates
The really interesting part to the story however is not the fact that an American burger giant is buying up a Canadian national treasure (Wendy’s has previously owned Tim Horton’s for some time), but rather that Canadian corporate tax rates are favorable relative to American corporate tax rates enough to justify a “tax inversion”. A tax inversion occurs when an American company merges with a foreign one and, in the process, reincorporates abroad, effectively entering the foreign country’s tax domicile. An American company that merges with a Canadian target company for share consideration can avoid U.S. residency for tax purposes as long as the shareholders of the Canadian target end up owning at least 20% of the shares of the new parent immediately after the acquisition.
Canada’s corporate tax rate in Ontario of 26.5% (the federal rate of 15% plus Ontario’s provincial corporate tax rate of 11.5%) is considerably favorable to the American corporate tax rate of 35% thanks in large part to the conservative Canadian government led by Stephen Harper. The Harper government lowered the federal tax rate to 15% in 2012 down originally from 28% since it took office in 2006.
