Obama Ponders Executive Action to Penalize 'Corporate Deserters'

Wreckers. Wreckers, all.

The Obama administration is weighing plans to circumvent Congress and act on its own to curtail tax benefits for United States companies that relocate overseas to lower their tax bills, seeking to stanch a recent wave of so-called corporate inversions, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said on Tuesday.

Mr. Lew said at a conference in New York last month that he did not believe he had the power to act alone on the issue. But Mr. Obama recently delivered a speech decrying inversions, and administration officials had been evaluating the legality of unilaterally limiting them.