Talking Tax

After years of negotiations led by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, more than 130 jurisdictions backed a deal last month to overhaul how and where multinational companies are taxed. Now countries are gearing up to implement a deal that will reallocate the profits of some of the world's largest companies and set a 15% minimum global tax rate. For the deal to succeed, it wi...

Last month saw the resolution of years-long negotiations over a global tax deal. Nearly 140 countries signed an agreement to create a 15% global corporate minimum tax rate and reallocate a portion of the largest multinationals’ profits. But the work doesn’t stop there. Now governments are facing the challenge of implementing the new rules over the next two years—which means deciding on a number of...

The growth of so-called "cord cutters" canceling their cable TV subscriptions has had an unintended consequence for local governments: their revenue from the right-of-way fees they impose on the cable companies is drying up. The solution some municipalities have devised for this problem is to levy an equivalent tax on Netflix, Hulu, and the other streaming services that are replacing cable TV in t...

Facebook's long-running tax dispute with the IRS finally resumed this month after a lengthy delay caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The social media giant is fighting IRS allegations that the company undervalued intangible assets that were allocated to its Irish subsidiary. It is one of a string of high-profile cases the IRS is fighting against multinationals over transfer pricing—the value of asse...

The Group of 20 finance ministers have formally backed a global plan to overhaul where and how multinationals are taxed and set a minimum 15% corporate tax rate. The OECD-brokered deal—backed by 136 countries— has been years in the making. It now heads into a new phase: Implementation. Officials will next have to tackle a plan to carry out the deal, including rolling back unilateral digital tax me...

Pandora's box got flung wide open this week, and secrets about how global billionaires and politicians stash their assets came spilling out. The Pandora Papers are a giant leak of millions of financial documents, reported by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. They show how many ultra-wealthy people and global leaders are using offshore trusts and other financial entities to...

In the field of accounting, the robots have most definitely arrived. Front-line accountants may already use some of type of bot, also known as robotics process automation, or RPA. Or maybe they would love to have a bot on their team. Others, of course, may be a bit fearful that automation is going to erase their jobs. To sort out how RPA works, and is evolving, we turned to Loreal Jiles, vice pres...

The House Ways and Means Committee passed a proposal last week to revamp the way U.S. multinationals pay taxes—but to a lesser extent than other Democratic plans on the table. The proposal—part of a broader tax package to help fund Democrats' planned spending of up to $3.5 trillion—would increase the minimum tax on U.S. companies' foreign income and get tougher in other ways on those that do busin...

The House Ways and Means Committee approved its portion of a multi-trillion dollar economic and social spending plan this week. But despite this latest victory, Democrats still have a lot of work to do before their aspirations become law. The House tax plan doesn't include some of President Joe Biden's notable proposals, including an overhaul of the way unrealized capital gains are treated at deat...

Four years after enactment of the 2017 tax law, the ramifications of Congress' tax code overhaul can be felt thousands of miles away in Ireland, as firms are no longer using the Emerald Isle to shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions. New research by a leading Irish economist shows that many U.S. multinationals are sending outbound payments from Ireland directly to the U.S., rather than to zero- or...

Workers across the U.S. are reconsidering their careers at this stage of the pandemic, looking for new job opportunities that offer better pay, benefits, remote work, and other flexibility. The trend, which some have dubbed "The Great Resignation," raises many questions about 401(k) and health savings accounts, jurisdictional taxes, and other tax-related issues. On this episode of our weekly Talki...

College football season starts this weekend and this will be the first year in which the players suiting up can earn significant income off of their name, image, and likeness. Partially in response to losing a case at the Supreme Court, the NCAA this summer lifted its longstanding ban on its student athletes generating this type of revenue for themselves. Though it may not be something most sports...

The Senate-passed infrastructure bill aims to revive nineties-era taxes on chemical companies and importers to pay for cleaning up some of the nation's most contaminated sites. While the bill still needs to clear the House, the chemicals industry claims the Superfund tax provisions are unfair because they impact a small subset of the industrial sectors that contributed to pollution. But advocates...

The Senate-passed infrastructure bill includes contentious cryptocurrency tax reporting requirements that the industry is hoping to change when the bill is considered by the House. The requirements would apply to brokers, such as U.S. exchanges, but the industry says the current language is too broad and would hit intermediaries, like software developers and miners, who don't have access to the in...

Investors interested in how companies meet environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards are also becoming increasingly interested in where—and whether—a company is paying tax. Witold Henisz, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and founder of the ESG Analytics Lab, argues that tax payments are a critical indicator of a company's broader social impact, and should...

For decades retailers have held onto the sales taxes they collect from consumers for weeks before sending those funds to state revenue agencies. States are becoming increasingly impatient with this process. Some are pushing for accelerated collection schedules and a few are even talking about real-time sales tax compliance strategies. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) has long highlighted accel...

Thalia Smith, a partner at Deloitte, is using her experience as a Black woman in the Big Four to help students looking to break into accounting. Smith, an audit and assurance partner, is leading Deloitte's $75 million effort to close the diversity gap in the accounting profession. Just 2% of the firm's partners, principals, and managing directors are Black. On this week's episode of Talking Tax, S...

Tens of millions of families across the U.S. this week received their first monthly advance on the child tax credit from the IRS. The new monthly payments, which launched Thursday, are the result of a pandemic relief law that also temporarily boosted the credit's value. Households will receive up to $300 per month for each child under age 6, and up to $250 for each child ages 6 to 17. While the ex...

The U.S. audit regulator is slated to get fresh leadership after a turbulent few years that culminated in the removal of its chairman last month. But it could take months for a new slate of leaders to be selected and installed as members of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. The board faces a challenge in improving the morale of the PCAOB’s 800-person staff after a report released last...

Large multinational corporations have for a few years now been required to report to the EU how much they pay in taxes to each European country they operate in. But now, after an agreement last month, it looks like those reports will soon be made public. On this episode of our weekly podcast, Talking Tax, Willy de Molina, a transfer pricing partner with Deloitte, talks about the impact this new ru...

Pandemic-related budget fears have prompted states to search for new sources of tax revenue. Lawmakers across the country are beginning to look toward social media as a mother lode of untapped corporate tax revenue. Social media tech giants, of course, aren't a fan of that approach. Maryland’s first-in-the-nation digital advertising tax has drawn legal challenges from Comcast Cable Communications,...

After years of grueling negotiations, the world's wealthiest countries reached an agreement on how—and how much—to tax multinational corporations. Now comes what could be a heavier lift: Getting buy-in from the rest of the world. Kate Barton, EY's global vice chair for tax, joins this week's episode of Talking Tax to sort through what the recent G-7 agreement means. She also touches on how getting...

The first loan approved through the Small Business Administration's Paycheck Protection Program went out the door just one week after the program was created last spring. At the time, with the pandemic shutting down nearly the entire country, the economic devastation looked like it could be limitless. The PPP was designed to help small business owners survive, offering government-backed loans that...

A federal tax credit has played a big role in speeding adoption of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, offering consumers up to $7,500 off their year-end tax bill if they buy a qualifying vehicle. But Congress designed the credit to phase out as manufacturers established EVs as viable parts of their product line, setting a sales threshold that Tesla and General Motors passed a few years ago. Re...

A few weeks ago, a Talking Tax listener reached out about an episode from last summer that focused on why so few CPAs are Black. Lynnwood G. Campbell's stories from a more than 40-year-long career in accounting were so fascinating, we invited him on this week's show. Campbell, now retired, started out at what is now PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, then spent decades at the Treasury Department. Campbel...