White House: Obama will keep donations from tax inversion companies

President Barack Obama has continued to campaign against tax inversions, but the White House says he will not return donations from corporate execs whose profits have been protected by that very process.

Speaking from Martha's Vineyard, a vacation enclave favored by the wealthy where the president is currently staying, White House Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz said that the president is focused on "stopping the problem," but he will keep the high-dollar donations from as many as 20 representatives of corporations which have used this technique.

Tax inversions are an accounting maneuver in which American corporations "move" their company to the headquarters of a small foreign subsidiary while most of their operations stay in the U.S., a process that lowers the corporation's tax bill. Obama has come under criticism related to tax inversions in the past, when it was observed that his 2009 auto bailout spent $1.7 billion on a small car company that underwent the inversion process.

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