Burger King's Tax Inversion and Canada's Favorable Corporate Tax Rates

08-25-2014 • forbes.com

In an unexpected and interesting move, Burger King is in talks to buy Canadian coffee-and-doughnut chain Tim Horton's Inc., a merger that would be structured as a "tax inversion" which would effectively move Burger King's headquarters to Canada (more specifically, my hometown of Oakville, Ontario). For those who are unfamiliar with Tim Horton's, the brand is tantamount to Canada's version of Dunkin Donuts that could just as easily adopt its own version of the tagline "America Runs on Dunkin" (think "Canada Runs on Tim Horton's"). Tim Horton's is no small coffee-shop chain. Tim Horton's, Canada's largest coffee-shop chain, has a market capitalization of about $8.4 billion, while Burger King's market capitalization is about $9.6 billion; the proposed merger would form a new entity worth about $18 billion.