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Revealing big pharma's tax dodging: The story behind the numbers
Giant United States drug companies report earning only small profits — 6 percent on average.
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Giant United States drug companies report earning only small profits — 6 percent on average. (Shutterstock/Vinogradov Illya)
It turns out drug dealers like to operate in the dark — even legitimate ones.
When we at Oxfam set out to estimate the size and scope of the tax dodging by some of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies for our new report, “Prescription for Poverty”, we had no idea it would take two years of painstaking research.
Yet, because of pervasive secrecy in the tax system, we had to spend months working with local researchers to uncover even the most basic financial information about the company’s operations in countries around the world.
This secrecy is intentional — the world’s biggest companies do not want to reveal to the public where they make their money.
