GSK fights US tax bill
30 Jan 2004
GlaxoSmithKline insists that it will fight a multi-billion dollar tax claim from the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) dating back to before the merger of SmithKline Beecham and Glaxo Wellcome.
The IRS claims that the former Glaxo Wellcome owes $2.7billion (£1.5billion) in taxes for the years 1989-96, plus interest for the intevening years totalling another $2.5billion (£1.4billion). GSK says that similar tax issues are unresolved for the 1997-2000 period, and it expects an additional bill for this period.
The bill relates to taxes on profits for Glaxo products in the US and in other countries. Athough accepting that such tax disputes are 'inevitable for a global business', GSK says that it attempted to resolve the dispute before receiving the IRS notice, and believed that the discussions had collapsed when the UK authorities supported the company's conclusion that no further taxes were due to the IRS. 'However,' it says, 'there continues to be a wide difference of views between GSK and the IRS.'
In other news, GSK has formed an alliance with Danish company NeuroSearch to research drugs affecting the central nervous system. The five-year project, which sees GSK paying NeuroSearch E82million, aims to find prospective compounds to treat depression, anxiety and schizophrenia. GSK will also have rights to develop NeuroSearch's existing pipeline drugs, including a triple monoamine reuptake inhibitor antidepressant which is currently in phase II clinical trials.
GSK has also signed a collaborative research agreement with vaccines specialist Institut Pasteur to develop a candidate vaccines for SARS. Initially, only a small team will be dedicated to this project, although the companies expect activity to increase as more data on the epidemiology of the SARS virus becomes available.
