President Obama’s new budget proposals aim to close loopholes but for now will perpetuate uncertainty.
The latest Obama budget promises more potent tax rules for US companies with overseas operations, according to reports. The aim of the administration is to limit what it views as tax avoidance and evasion through profit shifting and other means.
Despite the budget proposals, most observers said there is unlikely to be any changes to corporate taxes in 2014. This will continue to be a drag on corporates, according to one corporate tax attorney. The ongoing uncertainty “complicates planning because no one knows what direction tax legislation will take,” the attorney said. “Companies will be more cautious in taking action because they won’t be sure of the tax costs. This could slow things down a bit … it’s already slowing down some transactions I am working on.”
The proposed changes in the budget would make it more difficult for companies to arbitrage different tax rules in certain countries. For instance, where in one country a hybrid instrument might be treated as debt, in another it might be treated as equity. The proposals would also make it more difficult to move profits from digital transactions to low-tax countries. Companies now are able to limit their Subpart F income by using the cloud. But new rules would make that harder to do.
Another attorney who works with corporate said this time around it is possible the taxes will be enacted. “It is aimed at the the technology and pharmaceutical firms that transfer IP to the offshore affiliates and defer the tax on the earnings even though [done] quite legitimately under current law,” he said.
So far there have been no hints of discussing ideas proposed in November by then-Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, who suggested in one proposal that the US tax all offshore income of US companies either immediately or not at all (with a tradeoff). Also included in the Baucus draft was the idea of a one-time tax charge of 20 percent for earnings of foreign subsidiaries that have not yet been subject to U.S. tax.
The US has the industrialized world’s highest statutory corporate tax rate, at 35 percent. The marginal effective tax rate on corporate investment – the tax impact on capital investment as a portion of the cost of capital – is 35.3 percent, also highest among developed countries.
Obama will send the fiscal year 2015 budget to Congress March 4.