There is widespread agreement, across the political spectrum, that the gaming of the tax code by multinational corporations is a problem. When profits and jobs are shipped offshore, we not only harm the U.S. economy, we fuel a tax haven industry that drains wealth around the world. We seek to fix the problem of large, well-connected interests gaming the tax system.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Senate lawmakers introduced two pieces of legislation on Wednesday that would boost transparency of multinational corporations’ tax and employment practices while making it harder for companies to game the international tax system.
On Tax Day 2019, the first year of data on corporate taxes under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) are coming in. Those who championed the corporate reforms promised, among other benefits, that the changes would end the offshore shell games by multinationals, profits stashed in tax havens would return to the U.S., and the new competitive rate would attract a flood of foreign direct investment.
Opponents of the new law, like the FACT Coalition and our members, argued that the incentives would have the opposite effect: the offshoring of profits would continue and the incentives might well create new (unhelpful) distortions influencing corporate behavior.
It is now time to look at what actually happened. To get a better sense of the impact, consider the following recent excerpts from various news reports and analysis by tax experts.
Last Thursday, Representative Lloyd Doggett and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse announced that they are reintroducing the “No Tax Breaks for Outsourcing Act.” Our international corporate tax rules have been a mess for a long time, and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) failed to resolve the problems. The old rules and the new rules under TCJA both tax offshore corporate profits more lightly than domestic corporate profits, but in different ways. The No Tax Breaks for Outsourcing Act would create rules that tax domestic profits and foreign profits in the same way.
The old rules allowed American corporations to defer paying taxes on their offshore profits until those profits were officially brought to the U.S., which in many cases was never going to happen. The new rules, under TCJA, are also problematic because they exempt certain offshore profits and tax other offshore profits at just half the rate imposed on domestic profits.
The FACT Coalition joined 57 additional organizations to send a letter to Congress supporting the No Tax Breaks for Outsourcing Act – S. 780 and H.R. 1711, which would eliminate the deep discount that multinational companies get for shifting profits offshore and outsourcing jobs. The full letter can be read below or downloaded here.
“No Tax Breaks for Outsourcing Act” Endorsed by 57 National Organizations, Sponsored by 80 Members of Congress
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Eighty lawmakers introduced legislation Wednesday that would equalize the tax rates for domestic businesses and multinational corporations — reducing the tax incentive to shift profits and operations overseas that were enacted under the recent tax overhaul, according to the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition.
Amazon, the ubiquitous purveyor of two-day delivery of just about everything, nearly doubled its profits to $11.2 billion in 2018 from $5.6 billion the previous year and, once again, didn’t pay a single cent of federal income taxes.
