Int'l Tax News

The U.S. is pressing aheadwith plans to hit six nations that tax Internet-based companieswith retaliatory tariffs that could total almost $1 billion annually. Goods entering the U.S. -- ranging from Austrian grand pianos and British merry-go-rounds to Turkish Kilim rugs and Italian anchovies -- could face tariffs of as much as 25% annually, documents published by the U.S. Trade Representative show. The duties are in response to countries that are imposing taxes on technology firms that operate internationally such as Amazon.com Inc. and Facebook Inc.

Business groups and large corporations reacted negatively onwednesday to President Biden's expected proposal to fund his $2 trillion package of infrastructure spendingwith a substantial increase in corporate taxes.The scale of the infrastructure program ÔøΩ the details ofwhich Mr. Biden is expected to unveil later onwednesday ÔøΩ is so big that is that itwould require 15 years of higher taxes on corporations to pay for eight years of spending. The plans include raising the corporate tax rate to 28 percent from 21 percent. The corporate tax rate had been cut from 35 percent under former President Donald J. Trump.

Democrats have spent the last several years clamoring to raise taxes on corporations and the rich, seeing that as a necessary antidote towidening economic inequality and a rebuke of President Donald J. Trump's signature tax cuts. Now, under President Biden, they have a shot at ushering in the largest federal tax increase since 1942. It could help pay for a host of spending programs that liberal economists predictwould bolster the economy's performance and repair a tax code that Democrats say encourageswealthy people to hoard assets and big companies to ship jobs and book profits overseas.

The European Unionwould have "no hesitation" in using a carbon border tax adjustment to protect its industries if the bloc's trading partners put companies in the region at a disadvantage over climate targets, the EU climate tsar has said. This is despite the frosty reception for the idea from allies led by John Kerry, US president Joe Biden's climate envoy. Kerrywarned this month in an interviewwith the FT that such a tax should be a "last resort". A tax on imports from countries thatwere not committed to reaching climate neutrality by mid-century is being drawn up by the EU.

Joe Biden unveiled his plan to plough $2tn in government spending into US infrastructure alongside $2tn in higher corporate taxes, as the first stage of a multitrillion-dollar effort to reshape theworld's largest economy. The US president made the announcement in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania onwednesday, calling it the biggest public investment programme since the creation of the interstate highway system and the Space Race of the 1960s.

U.S. President Joe Biden reportedly told EU leaders during a virtual summit on March 25 that he is "keen" toworkwith the EU on tax issues to avoid a "race to the bottom." After the meeting, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi told reporters that "the previous U.S. administration, on the issue of taxing digital multinationals,was in total closure, but now the new administration has opened to international accords for the taxation of digital companies." He said Biden "brought new air, fresh air, in U.S.-EU relations."

The United Kingdom and EUwill keepworkingwith the United States and others to resolve the thorny issue of digital taxation, even amid a new round of U.S. tariff threats over digital services taxes. A U.K. government spokesperson on March 29 defended the U.K. DST after the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) announced March 26 that it might impose extra 25 percent tariffs on millions of dollars'worth of imports from the United Kingdom, India, Turkey, Spain, Italy, and Austria, after finding their digital taxes discriminate against American businesses.

Thewhite House in a March 31 fact sheet outlined a tax plan thatwould raise the corporate tax rate to 28 percent, increase the global minimum tax on corporations, enact a minimum tax on corporate book income, and eliminate some tax preferences for fossil fuels, among other measures.

Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Norway have received top rankings for their carbon prices, and more countries are on track to improve, according to a new OECD report. On March 30 the OECD published a summary of its findings on carbon pricing data measured by the effective carbon rates of 44 OECD and G-20 countries that account for about 80 percent of global emissions. The final report is scheduled for publication April 28. The effective carbon rate is the sum of fuel excise taxes, carbon taxes, and the prices of tradable emissions permits,which reduce emissions by giving low- and zero-carbon energy options a competitive edge over high-carbon alternatives. The countries studied are also given a carbon pricing score,which indicates how much of a country's energy-related carbon emissions face carbon pricing at or above the benchmark rates of ÔøΩ30, ÔøΩ60, or ÔøΩ120 per metric ton.

There is no more effectiveway for President Biden to meet his aggressive climategoals than a carbon tax. The timing seems ripe: his Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, has been a prominent advocate. Big business has flipped from opponent to proponent. Republican opposition is no longer monolithic. But a carbon tax lacks supportwhere it matters most:with Mr. Biden and the Democratic base. Progressive Democrats claim a carbon tax and its close cousin, cap-and-trade, are unfair to the poor and racial minorities. And a carbon tax appears to conflictwith Mr. Biden's promise not to raise taxes on any household earning less than $400,000 a year.

Negotiatorsworking on a global rewrite of corporate tax rules are debating how to force a rollback of domestic measures aimed at tech giants' revenue. Countries are deciding how to definewhich unilateral measureswill be replaced by the OECD-led effort, officials said Thursday at the American Bar Association European conference.

The U.S. is considering up to 25% tariffs on goods from Austria, India, Italy, Spain, Turkey, and the U.K. over digital taxes in each of those countries. The U.S. Trade Representative's office on Friday said it is seeking feedback this spring on potential trade responses to the six countries' measures "to preserve procedural options"while negotiations continue for a global digital tax solution.

President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats arewarning they may get tough on taxing U.S. companies abroad to raise more revenue andwalk back some policies they see as being too corporate-friendly. Their plans include raising the corporate tax rate and increasing taxes on U.S. companies' foreign income. They might also revise or reverse still-pending regulations to implement foreign-tax provisions of the 2017 tax lawÔøΩwith the aim of getting multinationals to pay more in U.S. taxes.

Given that Brazil, EU, Czech Republic and Indonesia haven't instituted digital taxes, the U.S. Trade Representative has ended its investigations on these countries and the bloc.

The U.K.will consider all options to defend its interests should the U.S. decide to impose tariffs on its businesses, the government said Monday. The U.S. announced Friday that itwould push aheadwith the its Section 301 probes into six digital services taxes from around theworld including the U.K. The U.S Trade Representative has argued in the past that these taxes unfairly discriminate against U.S. tech giants.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire have reiterated their support for international efforts to rewrite how the digital economy is taxed. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is currentlyworkingwith nearly 140 countries to rewrite international tax rules that govern how tech companies are taxed.

The minimum tax rate under pillar 2 of the OECD's global tax reform plan could curb the need for tax incentives that negatively affect developing countries, an OECD official says. "On tax incentives,we're very much hoping that pillar 2will delete much of the current chaos on granting tax incentives that do not deliver investment. So I think that [this] is a game changer. In the meantime, the transparency agenda is theway forward," Ben Dickinson of the OECD's Centre for Tax Policy and Administration told attendees during a March 23 Center for Global Developmentwebinar. Dickinsonwas among several panelistswho explained the need for transparency and scrutiny to address inequalities resulting from tax incentives. Susana Ruiz of Oxfam said transparency and oversight are a good start, but global reform is needed. According to Ruiz, some incentives are in place evenwhen they have little impact because of "political capture,"which Oxfam defines as "'the exercise of abusive influence by one or more extractive elite(s) to favor their interests and priorities to the detriment of the general good."

The European Commission isworking to develop a digital levy that does not interferewith the OECD process to modernize global corporate tax rules, is not discriminatory, and does not fuel trade tensions, the EU's competition chief said. Margrethe Vestager, the commission's executive vice president of competition policy, told members of the European Parliament (MEPs) during a March 23 meeting of the subcommittee on taxation (FISC) that the EU is "pushing forward"with its intent to propose an EU-wide digital levy by June thatwould go into effect by 2023while simultaneously supporting an international tax agreement at the OECD level. The 139-member OECD inclusive framework on base erosion and profit shifting aims to reach agreement by June on a two-pillar approach for modernizing the international corporate tax system. Pillar 1would revise profit allocation and nexus rules,while pillar 2 calls for global minimum taxation.

The EU's plans to introduce a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) run the risk of being misunderstood. During a March 23webinar organized by the French finance ministry, Vangelis Vitalis, deputy secretary for trade and economic affairs at New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said that the risks "were real" regarding the interpretation or perception of this future mechanism,which might be seen by the EU's international partners as a "protectionist measure." He said he feared retaliation and that an ill-conceived measure might lead to a tradewar. Vitalis called on the European Commission to take all the time needed to make sure it comes upwith the right proposal.

A pair of bills introduced by Democratic members of the Houseways and Means and Senate Finance committeeswould dramatically upend the corporate international tax environment, but their path forward is unclear. On March 11 several Democratic senators, including Finance Committee member Sheldonwhitehouse, D-R.I., andways and Means Committee member Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, introduced the No Tax Breaks for Outsourcing Act (S. 714). That same day,whitehouse and Doggett also introduced the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act (H.R. 1786).

With the success of its first big legislative initiative, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (P.L. 117-2), the Biden administration has moved on to the next item on its agenda: infrastructure. Long discussed but highly elusive, the need for additional spending on the country's infrastructure has broad bipartisan support. The problem is how to pay for a measure that's expected to cost more than $2 trillion. The first of a series on various alternatives for funding infrastructure, this article considers how corporate tax increases might be used. Imposing more taxes on profitable corporationswas high on President Biden's campaign list,which includedways to both reverse and fix some of the legislative changes enacted by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Progressive Democrats also have made higher taxes on corporations a key part of their platform.

A U.S. proposal to increase the rate of the global intangible low-taxed income provision of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act may influence OECD global tax reform discussions, a top German official said. "We are of course aware there's a plan to raise the GILTI rate; of course, this plays a role in our discussions, given that the U.S. is theworld's largest economy," Martin Kreienbaum, director general of international taxation at the German Federal Ministry of Finance and chair of the OECD Committee on Fiscal Affairs, said. Hewas speaking during a March 25 panel at the American Bar Association U.S. and Europe Tax Practice Trends virtual conference. "If theworld's largest economy thinks that the rate currently laid down in the GILTI should be higher in [the] future, then I think thatwould also have an impact on our discussions," Kreienbaum added.

The global intangible low-taxed income provisionwas a primary target of criticism from Democrats andwitnesses at a Senate Finance Committee hearing, although most critiques focused on reforming GILTI rather than advocating a complete rewrite. The criticism at the March 25 hearing appeared to coalesce around three aspects of GILTI ÔøΩ its exemption from tax for qualified business asset investment income, its reduced rate, and its inapplicability on a per-country basis. These critiques come as Finance Committee Chair Ronwyden, D-Ore., announced that hewill release a new international tax framework "in the coming days" in cooperationwith committee members Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Mark R.warner, D-Va.

Since 2018, the UK government, the European Commission, and several European national governments have advanced bold proposals for a new "digital services tax" (DST),with the aim of capturing profits earned by multinationals that reflect value contributed by users of digital platforms. The author offers a novel set of arguments in support of the DST,which appeal to both efficiency and fairness considerations. In particular, the DSTwould allow location-specific rent (LSR) earned by digital platforms to be captured by the countries inwhich such rent arises. The author argues that platform LSR is often hidden from view under the traditional international income taxation paradigm, due to that paradigm's focus on physical presence, source of payment, and profit allocation among related entities. Moreover, that paradigm ignores a basic intuition about how rent accruing to mobile intangible assets should be assigned:when the deployment of a technology is non-rivalwith respect to multiple locations, it is both efficient and fair to assign any rent earned from the technology's deploymentwith respect to a given location to that location.

The European Union is advancing sweeping new tax transparency rules this spring thatwill require companies to disclose publicly how andwhere they pay taxes. The proposal has been heralded by advocates as a victory for corporate transparency and the fight to end tax dodging. Companies, meanwhile,warn the planwill create compliance burdens and expose sensitive company informationÔøΩsuch aswhere they make investmentsÔøΩthatwill put them at a competitive disadvantage.

The international tax system "isn't fit for purpose," U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak says on Tuesday at Bloomberg event on G-7, G-20 priorities.

The European Unionwants to press aheadwith a digital tax from Jan. 1, 2023ÔøΩeven if OECD talks succeed in redefining how online companies are taxed, the bloc's top digital policy official said Tuesday. Even in the "optimistic scenario" of an agreement at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on a new system of digital taxing rights, "itwill take time before it is ratified and implemented all over," Margrethe Vestager, European Commission executive vice president for the digital age, told a European Parliament's tax subcommittee

Digitalization of everything is the motto of 2021.with Covid-19, there has been a significant acceleration in the growth of onlineworld. All eyes are on the Biden Administration as more and more countries join the digital tax bandwagon, and the OECD struggles to find consensus for digital service taxes (DST). As an important trade partner for theworld, and the countrywith the most companies impacted by the DSTwave, the U.S.'s actions nowwill have large ramifications.

President Biden is reportedly planning the first major hike in federal taxes in almost 30 years to fund the economic program set to follow the recently approved $1.9 trillion pandemic stimulus package. Unidentified sources told Bloomberg that the increaseswill reflect the promises Biden made during his 2020 campaign.

The United Nationswill have a final version of its digital tax proposal in late April, a subcommittee of the organization said. The U.N. is developing a new "Article 12B" in its model tax treaty to help countriesÔøΩespecially developing countriesÔøΩapply tax to digital services in agreementswith their treaty partners.

The European Unionwill continue to push aheadwith a planned digital tax, independently of the OECD effort to broker a global deal by mid-2021, it said Tuesday. "We are looking forward to a commission proposal for a digital levy,which should be a separate instrument, not linkedwith the corporate tax rules that are being negotiated in the OECD," Portuguese Finance Minister Joao Leao said after a meeting of EU finance officials.

The EU should drop its plans for a digital tax if there is an overall agreement at the OECD, Pascal Saint-Amans, director of the organization's Center for Tax Policy and Administration, saidwednesday. The European Parliament plans to recommend that the European Union introduce a single, bloc-wide digital levy,with national digital taxes being phased out.

Brussels is suing the UK at the European Court of Justice over tax breaks in Gibraltar, in a sign of the EU's determination to persistwith pursuing disputes dating back to Britain's membership of the bloc. The European Commission announced on Friday that Britain had failed to fully recover ÔøΩ100m of illegal state aid relating to tax breaks given to companies in Gibraltar. The origins of the case date back to a Spanish complaint in 2012, but Brussels said on Friday that the long-running sagawas still not over, claiming Gibraltarian authorities had failed to claw back all the money more than two years after an EU order to do so.

In this series covering likely and potential proposals by the Biden administration,1we have saved international tax for last because the Biden and Harris proposals have primarily focused on domestic issues alongwith fairness and parity. By looking at past and present goals to eliminate disparities and inequalities internationally and domestically,we find that international tax law has the most room for improvement. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act's corporate design is clear, and the harmful disparities can be eliminatedwhile fostering economic growth in the United States for all businesses and individuals.

While not identical, it isn't surprising that many of the priorities of the Obama and Biden administrationwill alignwith those of the Biden and Harris administration.

A pair of bills introduced by Democratic members of theways and Means and Finance committeeswould upend the corporate international tax environment, but their path forward is unclear.

On March 11 several Democratic senators, including Senate Finance Committee member Sheldonwhitehouse, D-R.I., and Houseways and Means Committee member Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, introduced the No Tax Breaks for Outsourcing Act (S. 714). That same day,whitehouse and Doggett also introduced the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act (H.R. 1786).

A proposed safeguard clause for a new EU directive on country-by-country reporting thatwould protect commercially sensitive information doesn't go far enough, according to participants in a recentwebinar hosted by the Renew Europe group. Under the European Commission's proposal, multinational enterprises that fall under the public CbC reporting directivewould be allowed to conceal commercially sensitive information for up to six years. During the March 17webinar, Roland Franke of the Family Business Foundation and Monikawünnemann of the Federation of German Industries said the safeguard clause could temper the CbC reporting requirement's potential negative impact on MNEs, but both said it is not enough to protect them from unfair competition.

The EU's highest court has found that Hungarian and Polish tax regimeswith progressive rate structures based on turnover rather than profit are in linewith state aid rules. In its March 16 judgment in European Commission v. Hungary, C-596/19 P (CJEU 2021), and European Commission v. Poland, C-562/19 P (CJEU 2021), the Court of Justice of the European Union interpreted article 107(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union to determinewhether to uphold the General Court of the European Union's findings that the progressive turnover taxes of Hungary and Poland do not violate EU state aid rules. The CJEU dismissed the European Commission's appeals in both cases, saying that the General Courtwas justified in its conclusions that the commission had not sufficiently established that the tax measures adopted by Hungary and Polandwere designed in a "manifestly discriminatory manner,with the aim of circumventing the requirements of EU law on State aid," according to the CJEU's March 16 release.

EU finance ministers reportedly asked the European Commission March 16 to make sure its June proposal for a digital tax does not interferewith talks on pillars 1 and 2 of the OECD'swork program. There is a need for a global agreement to reform the international tax system, commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis said at a news conference after the informal meeting of the Economic and Financial Affairs Council. "Wewelcome the change of position by the new U.S administration andwe remain confident of reaching a consensus by mid-2021." Luxembourg Minister of Finance Pierre Gramegna tweeted March 16 that there is "a reasonable prospect of reaching such a solution by mid-summer."

Googlewill pass on the cost of new digital services taxes to clients in Spain and France, it says, raising prices in response to unilateral taxes meant to make big tech companies pay more. Clientswith ads in Spain and Francewill be charged an additional 2% fee from May 1, 2021, regardless of company location, Google said thisweek in a statement.

European Union leaders are poised to affirm their commitment to a unilateral tax on tech giants if they fail to agree on a global frameworkwith partners, including Joe Biden's U.S. administration, by the middle of this year. Over a summit later this month, leaderswill "stress the need to urgently address the tax challenges arising from the digitalization of the economy to ensure fairness and effectiveness," according to an early draft of a joint communique seen by Bloomberg.while vowing towork on "a consensus-based solution by mid-2021," leaderswill "confirm readiness to move forward if a global solution is not forthcoming," according to the draft,which is still subject to change.

The United Nationswill have a final version of its digital tax proposal in late April, a subcommittee of the organization said. The U.N. is developing a new "Article 12B" in its model tax treaty to help countriesÔøΩespecially developing countriesÔøΩapply tax to digital services in agreementswith their treaty partners.

John Kerry, now Joe Biden's envoy on climate,warned the EU that a carbon border tax adjustment should be a "last resort", at the end of a four-day trip that aimed to build a transatlantic climate alliance ahead of the UN climate talks in November. The former secretary of state told the Financial Times hewas "concerned" about Brussels' forthcoming plans for a carbon border adjustment mechanism and urged the EU towait until after the COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow to move forward.

Annual reports recently filedwith the SEC show that most large U.S. pharmaceutical companies aren't shifting profits into the United States since passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act at the end of 2017. In fact, some have significantly increased the foreign share of theirworldwide profits. This is a notable development because the TCJA greatly reduced incentives to locate profits in low-tax jurisdictions that pharmaceutical companies have favored for decades.

The No Tax Breaks for Outsourcing Act, introduced by Senate Finance Committee member Sheldonwhitehouse, D-R.I.,would provide for current-year inclusion of net controlled foreign corporation income and modify rules regarding inverted corporations, among other measures.

France is pushing for a shared framework on green investmentswith the United States that includes a carbon border adjustment tax, but the United States has not yet committed to an energy tax. French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire received John Kerry, the U.S. special envoy on climate, on March 10 to discuss Europe-U.S. cooperation on climate matters after President Biden rejoined the Paris climate accord and recommitted to international strategies combating globalwarming.

Despite plans to increase the corporation tax rate in 2023, the United Kingdomwill remain a probusiness country because it offers many other incentives to attract investment, the nation's finance chief said. Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak on March 11 defended his proposal to increase the corporation tax rate from 19 percent to 25 percent starting in April 2023. He spoke during a House of Commons Treasury Committee hearing on the 2021 budget,whichwas presented March 3. The hearing coincidedwith the publication of Finance Bill 2021.

WASHINGTONÔøΩThe U.S. dropped a Trump administration demand in global corporate-tax negotiations, removing one obstacle to an agreement on adapting the tax system to the digital economy. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Friday that the U.S.would no longer insist on a "safe harbor" underwhich some elements of the tax ruleswould be optional. The idea, proposed in late 2019 by her predecessor, Steven Mnuchin, drew objections from European counterparts, though talks on how itwouldwork never advanced very far.

The U.S. decision to set aside a roadblock to a deal to overhaul global tax rules earned praise from policymakers Friday, but countries still have to address a number of key issues before agreement can be reached midyear. The U.S. plan, first proposed by former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, demanded that part of an OECD-led effort to changewhere and how multinational companies are taxed globally be optional. The U.S. call for a "safe harbor"was so internationally unpopular it had created an impasse in the talks.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is exploring measures to help countries implement its global minimum tax proposal, it said Friday. The OECD is consideringwhether it can use a multilateral instrument (MLI) thatwould allow countries to change multiple tax treatieswithout the need for negotiation, as one method for implementing its minimum tax plan. It had previously used this method to discourage tax avoidance through a practice known as treaty shopping.

Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is forming a panel of experts to look into the taxation of the digital economy, focusing specifically on improving competitiveness of Japanese companies. The panelwill look at the possibility of launching a digital services tax, similar to the taxes imposed in France, Italy, and the U.K. So far, the government has been monitoring international developments.