BioCentury This Week: On The Brink of Disunioun

When President Obama delivers the State of the Union address on Tuesday, he’ll be speaking to a polarized Congress where brinksmanship is the order of the day.  If lawmakers don’t act by March 1, budget sequestration will slash funding for biomedical research and oversight of the nation’s food and drug products. Continue reading

Moving Up The Ranks

Over the last decade, Arizona’s bioscience sector has made amazing progress in building foundational infrastructure for research and discovery in the life science sector.  This next decade of focused collaboration is  our opportunity to move up the ranks and along the path from Discovery to Development to Delivery. Continue reading

IRS Issues Final Medical Device Regulations

The Internal Revenue Service today released the final regulations on the Medical Device Tax which will go into effect in January of 2013 unless it is repealed between now and the end of the calendar year.

Industry groups from across the country have been actively working with both the IRS and with Congress to share with them the far reaching impacts that the tax will  have on both new innovations and currrent products developed and/or manufactured on shore.

In a report earlier today,  of Fierce Biotechg shared: that the agency is adopting very few of the suggested changes to the law’s major  provisions.

“The final regulations do not adopt this suggestion.” That’s a phrase you get  used to when reading the IRS’s 58-page document on the 2.3% tax. Commenters had  asked for exceptions for devices with medical and non-medical uses, more  specific definitions of “taxable medical devices” and provisions that would  account for a device’s pricing before applying the tax, among other things.

All of these were weighed, debated and ultimately rejected by the IRS, which  by and large affirmed its last guidance, something we covered  in detail last month. In sum, that leaves a 2.3% tax on medical devices as  defined by the FDA,  with exemptions for devices that are sold directly to consumers, destined for  further manufacture or slated to be sold outside the U.S. (Source:  IRS pays little mind to industry feedback in final device tax regs – FierceMedicalDevices )

The new IRS regulations cover 58 pages.  To download a copy, please click here:  Medical Device Tax Final Rules 2012-29628_PI