International Taxes

The Senate passed an Iran sanctions bill by voice vote on Monday afternoon.

The bill's passage comes after Senate Republicans and Democrats fought over aspects of the sanctions bill, the Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Human Rights Act (S. 2101), despite overall support.

Sen. Chuck Schumer proposed tax penalties in response to Facebook co-founder giving up his U.S. citizenship.

The European Union will continue to press ahead with discussions on a financial transactions tax even if the idea stagnates in the United States, a top official said Monday.

Algirdas Šemeta, the EU commissioner for taxation, told The Hill that the union would clearly prefer a global agreement on taxing financial transactions. 

But with congressional proposals on a transaction tax stalled, Šemeta said the EU is giving a serious look at their current proposal, which could generate up to 57 billion euros for member governments at a time of steep deficits.

“Of course, we would welcome the positive attitude of the United States to this tax,” Šemeta said. “But if the United States still needs more time in order to be convinced, we are ready to lead by example and maybe later on the United States will be able to join us.”

The head of a prominent business group on Thursday said the country’s high corporate tax rate makes it harder for U.S. businesses to compete in the global economy. 

John Engler, president of the Business Roundtable, told reporters at a breakfast hosted by The Christian Science Monitor that members of Congress need to be more aware of how the tax rate is hurting American industry. 

“They come from states, pretty much all of them, where they should be aware that states knock each other out paying for jobs and investments and factories and they go crazy trying to win these. Well, today, what we have got going on globally, nations are doing that,” Engler said. “We’re sort of the only nation that’s not in that competition.”

New Balance and New England lawmakers are working to preserve footwear duties in an Asia-Pacific agreement.

U.S. companies with offshore operations could be saving billions of dollars by utilizing apparently legal tax maneuvers, according to a new study.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, in a report released Monday, found that companies around the world are using a sometimes complex series of moves to take advantage of differences in how various countries tax corporate income.

According to the Paris-based research group, the moves both reduce the amount of revenue a government can collect and give certain businesses an unintended leg up. The OECD added that the tactics — which it dubbed “double non-taxation” — caused the same problems as policies that double tax companies.

“The OECD strives to eliminate double taxation and other obstacles to cross-border trade and investment,” Pascal Saint-Amans, director of the group's tax policy center, said in a statement. “At the same time, we are working hard to make sure that there are no tax loopholes between tax systems that would allow some taxpayers to gain an unfair competitive advantage over others.”

Corporate tax reform is creeping back into sight, although experts predict the election could chase the issue off the agenda.

The senator is holding up three international tax treaties over concerns that they give the government too much power.

The roughly $13 million in bonuses handed out to executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be under the microscope this week when Edward DeMarco, the acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), testifies on Capitol Hill.

On Tuesday, the Senate Banking Committee will hear from DeMarco at a hearing devoted to oversight of the FHFA. The next day, he’ll venture to the House side of the Capitol, where he will defend the bonuses before skeptical members of the Oversight Committee. The chief executives from Fannie and Freddie will join him.

DeMarco admitted in a letter sent to lawmakers Thursday that executive pay at the troubled mortgage giants is a “vexing” issue but said he had to strike a balance between attracting and retaining quality talent and tightening the accounting books.

On Tuesday, the House Financial Services Committee will mark up legislation that would suspend pay packages for top executives at the mortgage giants and place their employees on the same pay scale as federal government employees.

The Senate approved legislation that could punish China with higher tariffs in a 63-35 vote.