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- <text id=92TT2602>
- <title>
- Nov. 23, 1992: Fixing the Bottom Line
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Nov. 23, 1992 God and Women
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK, Page 20
- BUSINESS
- Fixing the Bottom Line
- </hdr><body>
- <p>Japan's Matsushita agrees to a new, maybe trendsetting, U.S.
- tax formula
- </p>
- <p> High on the list of Games Multinational Corporations can play
- is so-called transfer pricing, or the assigning of arbitrary
- values to cross-border shipments of parts and materials to
- foreign subsidiaries depending on how they affect the bottom
- line. The IRS in Washington has long charged that many Japanese
- firms doing business in the U.S. artificially inflate the value
- of Stateside deliveries to reduce the profits -- hence the taxes
- -- of their American subsidiaries. Now one of Japan's largest
- consumer-electronics manufacturers, Matsushita Electric
- Industrial Co., has agreed to a new pricing method designed to
- head off questions through advance consultations. Matsushita,
- whose consumer-appliance brands include Panasonic and National,
- became the first major Japanese firm to adopt the new system.
- If approved by President-elect Bill Clinton, who has claimed
- during the campaign that foreign firms were underpaying U.S.
- taxes, it could well set a pattern.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-