If Walgreen Co were to relocate its tax home-base to Switzerland, as some of its investors want, the United States would lose about $4 billion in tax revenue over five years, activist groups said on Wednesday. The nation's largest drugstore chain, based in Illinois, is under pressure from some of its shareholders to do a deal known as a tax inversion with Alliance Boots Holdings Ltd that would shift Walgreen's tax domicile overseas.Two groups issued a report that said such a move would be seen by many Americans as "deeply unfair and unpatriotic.""Walgreens should show its commitment to our communities and our country by staying an American company," said Nell Geiser, an official at Change to Win, a labor union coalition. The other group releasing the report was Americans for Tax Fairness, a tax activist group that gets some of its funding from unions.The two groups, citing estimates from three Wall Street investment firms if Walgreen were to do an inversion, said the move would add up "to more than $4 billion in lost tax revenues over five years, most of which would likely have been paid in the United States."
Walgreen Co. (Walgreens), together with its subsidiaries, operates as a retail drugstore chain in the United States. Shares of WAG fell by 0.09% or $-0.07/share to $74.67. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $43.31 and as high as $75.84. On average, 5853260 shares of WAG exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 2687352.
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