Four pharmaceutical companies in settlement talks with states to resolve claims related to their involvement in the national opioid crisis stand to reap about $1 billion each in tax breaks if a combined payout of more than $26 billion is finalized, according to company filings.
The drug distributors McKesson Corp. , AmerisourceBergen Corp. and Cardinal Health Inc., along with Johnson & Johnson , plan to deduct the payouts from their taxes, filings show.
Cardinal, which expects to pay $6.6 billion as part of the settlement, said in a regulatory filing earlier this month that it anticipates receiving a $943 million tax benefit as a result of losses it incurred because of the payout charge. The company said it has filed for an income tax refund it expects to receive in the next 12 months.
Cardinal, based in Dublin, Ohio, said $420 million of the benefit would come from offsetting profits from prior tax years when there was a higher corporate income-tax rate, taking advantage of a provision created by Congress as part of its Covid-19 economic-relief package last March
“We recorded a net operating loss for tax purposes in our second quarter, which, as permissible under current federal law, will be carried back to recover previously paid federal taxes,” a Cardinal spokeswoman said in an email.
