Posted on 05/04/2009 5:21:03 AM PDT by reaganaut1
The Obama administration will roll out details Monday of what aides are calling a far-reaching crackdown on offshore tax avoidance, targeting many U.S.-based multinational corporations and wealthy individuals.
President Barack Obama will flesh out a proposal included in his February budget blueprint seeking to curb the practice of parking foreign earnings in offshore tax havens indefinitely. By some estimates, $700 billion or more in U.S. corporate earnings have accumulated in overseas accounts in recent years.
The plan to be announced Monday will go further. It aims to change the legal treatment of offshore subsidiaries and structures that companies have used to avoid not only U.S. taxes, but taxes in other developed countries as well.
In addition, the administration will strive to tighten rules that have encouraged thousands of Americans to open offshore bank accounts in an effort to duck U.S. taxes. The plan would increase information reporting and tax withholding as well as penalties, and make it harder for foreign account-holders to win cases in court. The administration promised new enforcement tools to crack down on tax-haven abuse.
"What we really have is a system that is in many ways broken," a senior administration official said Sunday, one that "allows people to play games...to almost completely avoid paying taxes on active foreign earnings."
The sweep of the administration's plan took some tax experts by surprise, and foreshadows potential fights with big businesses later this year over some of their most cherished breaks, particularly as Congress looks for revenue to pay for new initiatives.
"There absolutely will be" opposition from business, particularly if the administration doesn't allow a suitable adjustment period, said Phil West, a lawyer with Steptoe & Johnson LLP, who was international tax counsel for the Treasury Department under President Bill Clinton.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
The corporate tax code is complicated enough that there probably are loopholes to be closed, but this should be done simultaneously with lowering tax rates. The Dems are just looking for grab money for their agenda.
“”There absolutely will be” opposition from business...”
Gee, ya think?
If you’d do away with the confiscatory tax policy, businesses would actually STAY IN AMERICA.
Economics 101: Whatever activity you levy a tax on, you will get less of that activity.
Therefore businesses will find a way to avoid this tax...keeping Obama and Co. from reaping any benefit.
Long Live the Welfare State!
How will Wall Street respond to these changes?
Beware these firms don’t decide to ‘park’ their headquarters right out of America.
Or the foreign arm simply splits off.
And there it is. - We are hiding the fact that America is producing less and less as Socialist tax programs forces real industry to leave America.
Does anyone know anything really produced here anymore?
Most heavy industry is gone. - killed by union demands and endless government policies that make it cheaper to make steel, for example, and ship it halfway around the world than to manufacture it here.
Stanley Tools is gone. Great job Congress.
This is so egregious that it has to be the agenda planned all along. - Nobody could be this consistently stupid over 5 decades as industry flees and immigration soars.
Anyone who does not see where this is going is just not looking.
I think this is posturing, performing for the choir. Congress, especially the senate will not kill their constituents business. The off shore money is foreign profit many think is not taxable anyway.
Less than 10 percent chance this will pass the house and senate. Add this idea to the cap and trade, gun confiscation, passenger train initiative, etc. junk pile.
Look for “Internet use” and “Internet sales” taxes too.
Maybe you should also let everybody know how long you've been living in Dreamland....
Whenever they manage to get Franken sworn in, the only "constituents" that will count is their prime contributors.
Little issues like voting "correctly" are sure to be addressed before too much time passes, so the rest of us can just assume our righteous place as a disenfranchised part of the revenue stream.
And...limit ALL of these assholes to 2 terms! Just like the prez!
I recommend they move to Ireland, where the corporate tax rate is 12.5%.
In the finest Obama Admin tradition, it will probably be another 1,000 page document that the mind-numbed Congress & Senate will vote on without reading it as usual.
Probably will have all sorts of unnoticed little items from making Chave..er Obama El Presidente For Life, to jailing all domestic terrorists such as U.S.military veterans and Republicans, to giving instant citizenship and voting rights to all illegals, whether they are currently in the USA or not here yet.
Sorry for the cynicism, but the Obama Regime is proving to be the most corrupt and despotic Admin ever. The 4th Reich, here we come.
......Whenever they manage to get Franken sworn in, the only “constituents” that will count is their prime contributors. ......
Which happen to be those same corporations with repatriated profits operating under tax laws formulated and reformulated by the Senate
“The Obama administration will roll out details Monday of what aides are calling a far-reaching crackdown on offshore tax avoidance,...”
Panama just elected its new president yesterday. We are very pleased. He is a mature, wealthy business man. Ricardo Martinelli was educated in the U.S. He owns many supermarkets. He is a multimillionaire entering the presidency and not the other way around.
He will not hesitate to tell that cheeky Kenyan bastard to go to hell and to use the Horn to go from one coast to the other. I would. The heck with treaties.
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