Congress will launch hearings next year on rewriting international tax rules

Congress will launch hearings next year on rewriting international tax rules | Norton Rose Fulbright

November 01, 1998 | By Keith Martin in Washington, DC

Congress will launch hearings next year on rewriting international tax rules, according to Senator Roth (R.-Del.). These rules date from the 1960’s and are out of sync with the times. Roth is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

A key issue in the debate will be to what extent US tax rules should favor letting US companies compete on the same terms as the competition in foreign countries or to what extent the focus should be “tax neutrality,” which is the idea that US companies should be subject to the same 35% tax on worldwide income whether they invest at home or abroad. Otherwise, they may have an incentive to invest abroad. Labor unions tend to worry about “runaway plants.”