Taxing times
The Republican tax bill has a lot pharma likes, but industry will fight elimination of the Orphan credit
Biopharma industry lobbyists responding to the House Republican tax reform bill released Nov. 2 are working to ensure that the baby isn’t thrown out with the bathwater. They strongly support prominent parts of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (H.R. 1), including lowering of the corporate tax rate, incentives to repatriate profits and preserving the R&D tax credit, but will try to reverse its elimination of the Orphan Drug tax credit, and to shelter companies with global supply chains from a proposed excise tax on payments from U.S. corporations to foreign affiliates.
BIO and the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) anticipated that the Orphan tax credit could be a target. They have been lobbying for months to prevent it from being swept up in efforts to pay for tax cuts under H.R. 1 that would amount to $2.5 trillion over 10 years before any offsets...