Evaluating the Ethics of Inversion

Susan H. Godar, Patricia J. O’Connor, Virginia Anne Taylor

Journal of Business Ethics · 2005 · Volume 61 · Issue 1

Abstract

In the last five years, a number of U.S. companies have either moved their locus of incorporation to countries with more favorable tax laws, or announced such moves. Given this trend toward “inversions”, and the polemics that have accompanied it, we offer two ways in which the ethics of such a move can be evaluated. We provide multinational executives with two applications of ethics to inversion: Kant’s deontological theory and the consequentialist perspective of utilitarianism.

Keywords

Inversion, ethics, Kant’s deontological theory, utilitarianism

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