Investment Company Urges Americans To Stash Money In Belize, ‘One Of The World’s Top Tax Havens’

Tax havens are in many ways the liger of the financial world: everyone knows they exist, but few among us have ever seen one. They exist in a realm most of us remain blissfully unaware of, accessed only by the wealthiest in society.

However, fresh off their 15 minutes of fame during Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, tax havens are now being promoted more openly as investment companies try to stoke rich people’s fears and encourage them to avoid paying U.S. taxes.

Exhibit A is an investment company named Buy Belize, whose website appeals to wealthy individuals who “lose sleep over the security of [their] assets & hard-earned money” using right-wing language terminology such as “death taxes,” which they incorrectly list at 55 percent (it’s actually 40 percent). The group encourages people to take their money out of the United States and store it in Belize instead, which they call “one of world’s top tax havens — a truly safe locale for your money.” Buy Belize also offers to set up shell companies — International Business Companies — to “protect investments from taxes as well as legal judgments.”

Buy Belize also advertises on The Glenn Beck Program, appealing to wealthy people who are “frustrated, nervous, and worried about change” to open offshore accounts in Belize, “one of the last tax havens left in the world.”

Listen to the radio ad:

Offshore accounts are a principal mechanism rich people and corporations use to avoid paying taxes in the United States. A study last year found that the super-wealthy around the world are shielding at least $21 trillion in secret offshore tax havens, and the problem has grown significantly in the past few years. And it isn’t just Mitt Romney who stores his wealth in foreign tax havens. In 2012, the 60 largest corporations in America offshored $166 billion, costing American taxpayers billions in lost revenue. As a result, this loss of tax revenue is draining federal and state budgets.

To learn more about offshore accounts, listen to NPR’s Planet Money as they demonstrate opening up a shell company “UnBelizeAble.”

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The Company That Ran The ‘Cruise From Hell’ Pays Almost No Income Tax

Carnival’s “cruise from hell” — during which the ship lost power off the Yucatan peninsula and was stuck for days, leaving passengers no recourse to relieving themselves in plastic bags — finally ended last night as the crippled boat was tugged into port. “It was horrible. Horrible,” one passenger said. “The bathroom facilities were horrible and we could not flush toilets. No electricity and our rooms were in total darkness.”

Carnival will be refunding money to the passengers of the ill-fated cruise and offering them a free trip in the future. (“This is my first and last cruise. So if anyone wants my free cruise, look me up,” one passenger said.) But one entity to which Carnival has not been giving any money is the national treasury — as the New York Times’ David Leonhardt reported, the company has paid just a 1.1 percent rate on 11.3 billion in profits over the last five years:

The Carnival Corporation wouldn’t have much of a business without help from various branches of the government. The United States Coast Guard keeps the seas safe for Carnival’s cruise ships. Customs officers make it possible for Carnival cruises to travel to other countries. State and local governments have built roads and bridges leading up to the ports where Carnival’s ships dock.

But Carnival’s biggest government benefit of all may be the price it pays for many of those services. Over the last five years, the company has paid total corporate taxes — federal, state, local and foreign — equal to only 1.1 percent of its cumulative $11.3 billion in profits. Thanks to an obscure loophole in the tax code, Carnival can legally avoid most taxes.

Carnival uses a tax loophole that allows companies incorporated overseas to avoid U.S. taxes, even if the bulk of their operations are based in the states. Between 2008 and 2011, 26 major corporations in the U.S. managed to pay no income tax, despite making $205 billion in pre-tax profits. (HT: Teamster Nation)

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FDA head and company CEOs cheer bumper haul of new drugs

* Approvals in past 2 years "cause for optimism" -FDA head

* Scientific progress, better diagnostics help productivity

* Pick-up follows lean period for drug industry R&D labs

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Pharmaceutical industry productivity is improving as a more targeted approach to drug development yields dividends and regulators offer speedier decisions on medicines that make a real difference to patients.

That is the view of both the head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and drug company CEOs meeting in Davos this week at the World Economic Forum.

"The products that we have approved in the last two years do give us real cause for optimism," FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg told Reuters.

A total of 39 new drugs won approval last year - a record only beaten in 1996 - up from 30 in 2011, which itself was a marked improvement on the 21 cleared in 2010.

The industry badly needs a winning streak after delivering poor returns for several years due to a wave of patent expiries on older products and a notable failure to bring enough new drugs to market to replace them.

The advance reflects progress in understanding the basic science of many diseases - notably some types of cancer - as well as smarter use of tests to target treatments to specific patient groups based on genetic profile.

"Not only have we been able to approve more new drugs that have real benefits for patients but also classes of drugs that signal where we are going in areas like personalised medicine, where we've been able to use diagnostics to target sub-populations of responders," Hamburg said.

The attitude of the FDA has also helped, according to Novartis CEO Joe Jimenez.

"The FDA has really shifted back to a very disciplined scientific approach to drug approvals, so we are starting to see more drug approvals come through," he said.

These days, however, winning approval for a new medicine is not the whole story. Drug manufacturers also have to fight hard to win a place for their usually pricey new products on lists of treatments covered by insurers or state health services.

The rigour of having to prove the value, as well as clinical effectiveness, of new medicines is helping to make companies more targeted in developing drugs that have a clear edge - even is this involves zeroing in on small, niche markets, said Sanofi Chris Viehbacher.

Discovering new medicines and progressing them through the three required stages of clinical development remains, however, a complex business with a fair dose of serendipity.

"It's not like engineering where the iPhone 5 follows on from the iPhone 4. Coming up with a new drug requires skill, insight and luck," said Merck & Co Ken Frazier.

"But we are on the verge, potentially, of a new wave of pharmaceutical innovation - and I think Merck stands to be at the forefront of that new wave."

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Peter Graff)

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Watson buys women's health company Uteron Pharma

PARSIPPANY, N.J. -- Drugmaker Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc. said Wednesday that it has completed a deal to expand its women's health business, buying Belgian drug developer Uteron Pharma SA for $150 million in up-front cash.

Watson, which makes generic, brand-name and biosimilar medicines, said Uteron could receive up to $155 million more in future milestone payments, depending on whether products it is testing are approved for sale.

Uteron, based in Liège, Belgium, is a spinoff of the University of Liège. It has several female healthcare products in development.

Those include a contraceptive device, a next-generation birth control pill containing the natural hormone estrogen and tests to increase the success rate of in-vitro fertilization. That's a technique to help infertile couples by combining an egg and sperm in a laboratory dish and then transferring the resulting embryo into the woman's uterus.

Uteron's first product could be an intrauterine device called Levosert, for long-term contraception and treating heavy menstrual bleeding. The device is awaiting approval in several European Union countries and could go on sale there this year. It's in late-stage testing for the U.S. market, where it could be launched in 2014 if approved.

Watson, based in Parsippany, N.J., has the rights to market Levosert in Western Europe and, in partnership with two other companies, in the U.S. and some Eastern European countries.

Another Uteron product, Diafert, a test kit for determining the quality of a woman's eggs for in-vitro fertilization, could increase the success rate for implanting embryos. That could help couples achieve a pregnancy with fewer cycles of costly in-vitro fertilization.

Watson, which is the world's third-largest maker of generic prescription drugs, said Diafert is expected to receive approval in the European Union in the second half of this year and launch after that. It could be approved in the U.S. in 2014. Watson has exclusive global marketing rights to Diafert.

Uteron has another product in mid-stage patient testing, Estelle birth control pills. They contain a new natural estrogen called estetrol believed to be safer than other oral contraceptives. Estelle could be launched worldwide in 2018.

In addition, Uteron has potential products in early development, including Colvir, a treatment for vaginal infections.

In afternoon trading Watson shares rose 43 cents as $85.69.

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Idaho gets $2.9 million in drug company settlement

BOISE, Idaho -- Idaho will be collecting $2.9 million as part of the latest settlement with two national pharmaceutical companies.

Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden announced Thursday an agreement reached with Pfizer Inc. and Pharmacia Corp.

The agreement stems from a 2007 lawsuit filed by Idaho and other states over allegations the companies were inflating the average wholesale prices of drugs. Idaho and other states alleged the flawed pricing system was causing Medicaid programs to overpay for drugs like Zyrtec and Celebrex.

The settlement is intended to reimburse taxpayers for the excessive prices Idaho Medicaid paid for prescription medicines.

So far, Wasden and his office have recovered more than $25 million in similar settlements with 36 drug makers. Lawsuits are still pending against two other companies.

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