Congrats New York, 4400 jobs shot to hell.

In a huge rejection of the United States’s corporate income tax rate – the highest in the world – America’s second-largest drug company, Pfizer, Inc., just proposed a merger with Britain’s AstraZeneca that would move the company away from New York’s combined 42.1% corporate rate and into the United Kingdom’s 20% rate.

Pfizer has been based in New York City since its founding in 1849.

But, but, the new business friendly tax free New York?

Ian Read, Pfizer’s Scottish-born Chief Executive, said that the proposed deal would let Pfizer eliminate “redundant functions” and overlapping operations. “Redundant functions” is business-speak for dumping staff at the New York corporate headquarters. The company already sold its 685 Third Avenue New York City office building in 2010 for $190 million. Currently, 4,400 employees are consolidated at the company’s world headquarters at 235 East 42nd Street, near Grand Central Terminal.