Outsourcing to India unfair practice: Obama

Washington, Feb 13: In line with the US president Barack Obama's anti-outsourcing stance, the US president has lashed out on US companies outsourcing business to India for unfair business practices, media reports said.

"If you are a business here, entirely located in the United States, and investing in the United States, and hiring workers in the United States, you are paying a 35 percent rate. If you are a multinational and you are investing in India, and your workforce is in India, and your plants and equipment are in India, but your headquarters are here, you are taking deductions on all the expenses in India, but you are keeping your profits outside the United States, that just doesn't seem entirely fair," Obama said.

Stating that his intention behind imposing tax on firms shipping jobs overseas was to provide a level playing field, Obama said that these firms are taking undue benefits of the new tax systems.

"The same is true where you have companies that have 90 percent of their sales in the United States, but are posting 90 percent of their profits overseas. You get a sense there that the accountants have been busy," he said.

Obama said that some of the tax proposals were modified based on the legitimate concerns of the some of the firms.

"Some US companies had then pointed out, well, we may be investing a lot in R&D here in the United States, but we have got to have factories or sales forces outside the United States, and you don't want to discourage [companies] from doing that," he said.

He added that the ultimate goal of the proposal was achieve a level playing field between businesses, which should not be mistaken for anti-business.

"But our goal here is simply to make sure that there is an even playing field between businesses who are investing in the United States, hiring US workers, selling to a lot of customers here as well as overseas, and those who are operating across borders. And that is an area where there can be some legitimate debate, but certainly shouldn't be portrayed, somehow, as being anti-business," Obama said.

OneIndia News