Tax Policy And Competitiveness Of US Based Corporations

Listening to the Presidential debates and reading the platforms of the 2 candidates, there is a lot of noise, truths and half truths related to what should be policy to ensure that the US corporations remain competitive in a global economy.  In my usual reading of corporate proxy material and other filings, I came across this in the S-4 filing related to the Eaton Corp acquisition of Cooper Industries.  It states that to grow in todays economy, Eaton Corp has to move their incorporation offshore to both grow faster.

".....Eaton’s proposal assumed that the transaction will be structured such that the surviving parent entity would be incorporated outside the United States. The decision that the parent company would have a non-United States location was made because the transaction was not economically feasible without incorporation outside the United States due to material competitive advantages currently enjoyed by Cooper as a result of its non-United States incorporation. Amongst those advantages are greater flexibility and lower cost of cash management, an enhanced ability to grow faster through organic growth and acquisitions, as well as a lower worldwide effective tax rate. Loss of these existing Cooper competitive advantages would have caused a large dis-synergy that would have prevented the acquisition from occurring."