OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

Letter to Richard Gonzalez, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of AbbVie Inc.

Letter

Date: July 18, 2014
Location: Chicago, IL
Issues: Business and Consumers Health and Health Care

Dear Mr. Gonzalez:

This morning you and the Board of Directors of AbbVie announced it has reached an agreement on a merger with Shire that will allow the combined company to redomicile abroad to avoid paying U.S. taxes. I urge you and AbbVie's Board of Directors to reverse your plans to invert and to weigh the long-term consequences this move, known as a corporate inversion, would have on a company that relies on U.S. taxpayers and U.S. taxpayer-funded programs to profit and thrive.

AbbVie products have significantly improved the lives of millions of people. These contributions, however, would not have been possible without the educated workforce, transportation infrastructure, and tax benefits that this country has provided for decades. Your company relies on basic medical research conducted at the taxpayer-supported National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop new profit-making drugs and other products. AbbVie's blockbuster drug Humira is sold through taxpayer-supported programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which helped the company generate nearly $1.2 billion in sales the first quarter of this year alone.

Given this support for your research, production and sales, I am appalled to learn that AbbVie is prepared to renounce its American corporate citizenship to avoid paying U.S. taxes over the next several years through a corporate inversion. Those are U.S. tax revenues that will not be invested in basic research at the NIH to support the development new drugs, or the highways and airports that serve your company, or the federal system of patent protections from which your company has profited greatly.

The AbbVie website has an entire section on "responsibility," discussing at length the people AbbVie serves. If AbbVie inverts, it will have chosen to duck its corporate responsibility and turn its back on the very people it claims to serve.

I strongly urge you and the Board of Directors to reverse your decision to move the company's domicile overseas to avoid U.S. taxes. Surely, you and the board must recognize that your company's continued commitment to America would good for AbbVie's bottom line.

Sincerely,



Dick Durbin
U.S. Senate


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