In April 2019 Ethical Consumer viewed Open Secret's website, www.opensecrets.org, and found that Pfizer in 2018 had contributed $2,563,802 in political donations, with 54% going to Republicans. It had also spent $11,360,000 on lobbying.
Open Secrets generic ref 2019 (2 January 2019)
In April 2019 Ethical Consumer viewed its list of free trade lobby group members, updated in Feb 2019 from the websitess of the relevant organisations. Pfizer was listed as a member of the following organisations:
US Council for International Business
TransAtlantic Business Council
Amcham EU
World Economic Forum
American Legislative Exchange Council
National Foreign Trade Council
Ethical Consumer defined each one as a corporate lobby group which lobbied for free trade at the expense of the environment, animal welfare, human rights or health protection.
Ethical Consumer Lobby Group member list (7 February 2019)
In April 2019 Ethical Consumer viewed Pfizer's page on the corporate information site Hoovers.com. The company had numerous subsidiaries which were considered to be high risk of being used for tax avoidance strategies based in Delaware (USA), British Virgin Islands, Luxembourg, Jersey, and the Cayman Islands. At the time of writing Ethical Consumer considered each jurisdiction to be tax haven. Pfizer's Annual Report was checked but it contained no country by country tax reporting. Subsequently Pfizer received Ethical Consumer's worst rating for likely use of tax avoidance strategies.
Generic Hoovers ref 2019 (2 January 2019)
A report published by Citizens for Tax Justice in October 2016 criticized US tax policy on large multinational corporations. Many multinational corporations used accounting tricks to pretend for that a substantial portion of their profits were generated in offshore tax havens, countries with minimal or no taxes where a company’s presence could be as little as a mailbox.
The study examined the use of tax havens by Fortune 500 companies in 2015. It revealed that tax haven use was ubiquitous among America’s largest companies and that a narrow set of companies benefited disproportionately.
Amongst these companies Pfizer was named in the report both as one of the 'Top 30 companies with the most money held offshore' and as one of the 'Top 20 Companies with the Most Tax Haven Subsidiaries'.
It was found to maintain 181 subsidiaries in the following tax havens: Bahamas (11), Cayman Islands (1), Channel Islands (3), Costa Rica (3), Hong Kong (7), Ireland (29), Luxembourg (42), Netherlands (65), Panama (4), Singapore (10) and Switzerland (6)
The amount held offshore was liste as $193.6 billion (the second-highest amngst the Fortune 500).
Offshore Shell Games 2016 (October 2016)
