Tuesday, August 26, 2014

The Whopper is about to become un-American

Burger King is the latest U.S. company to try to buy a smaller foreign country and move its mailing address there so it can pay lower taxes.

Burger King wants to buy Canadian restaurant chain Tim Horton's so it can take advantage of Canada's lower corporate tax rate.

Business Insider noticed the Burger King Facebook page was blowing up with criticism of the planned move:
Tax inversions have become a big corporate trend as companies seek to lower their tax bills. This time, though, we have a major household name taking advantage of it, and people have noticed. 
Thousands of Burger King's seven-million-plus Facebook fans have described the fast-food restaurant with words like "traitor" and "un-American."
We took a look. The comments are vivid and frequent:
  • Now that Burger King is moving its headquarters to Canada (to take advantage of a lower corporate tax rate) will U.S. tax payers still be on the hook for food stamps and other benefits paid to Burger King's U.S. employees? If Americans are going to subsidize minimum wage workers they might want to eat their cheeseburgers from a company that at least has enough respect to fly its corporate flag in the U.S.
  • No more whoppers for me.
  • Congrats to BK. Great business thinking. Now that your gonna save all this money why not pass it on to the employees. Raise their pay with all the extra money. You can afford it now.
  • Burger King as dead to me as Walmart.
Finally, here's a priceless rant:
  • We don't believe you and refuse to do business with any corporation that moves from the USA. I will not be going to a Burger King again. Just greedy people trying to drive down the middle class and treating their workers like slaves. Shame on you and the whole corporate America. Your nasty food is no good for Americans to eat anyway. We do pray for the pitiful workers that will get the brunt of this. It is always the middle and lower class that gets the boot while people like CEO's get to pack in fortunes for themselves and their buds. Try to sell all of burgers in Canada. We don't want anymore of them. Fly a Canadian flag.
If you'd like to comment, just click here for the Burger King Facebook page, like it and comment away!

A public outcry against similar plans by Walgreen's forced that company to scrap its plans to flee America's taxes. Let's hope the same happens to Burger King.