Talking Tax

Ireland has presented a frugal budget for 2026 in the face of uncertainties caused by President Donald Trump's tariff and tax policies. The 15% global minimum tax on corporations and Trump's threats to impose large tariffs on pharmaceutical companies—most of which are US companies headquartered in Ireland—have increased pressure on the country to find ways to remain competitive. With foreign-owned...

Taxpayer advocates are keeping close watch on this week's decision to name Social Security Administration Commissioner Frank Bisignano as CEO of the IRS, and have many questions about what it could mean for the agency. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday he was creating a new IRS CEO position, and Republicans in Congress seem to be generally supportive, though some said the White House sh...

Ever since student athletes gained the right to be compensated for use of their image in advertisements and merchandise sales, the money has flooded in, but so have some problems. While the athletes can now be compensated for their name, image, and likeness—or NIL—schools still can't directly pay them for playing, and the NCAA has rejected any notion of "pay-for-play." Instead, athletes can receiv...

About three months have passed since Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the US, along with its Group of Seven allies, agreed to work on a system that would exempt American companies from parts of the global minimum tax. In that time, the US proposed a technical solution to separate its tax system from the global minimum tax. But other countries have raised concerns about what the US p...

Big job cuts and reductions in resources at the IRS are liable to prolong disputes over tax bills and force the agency to leave money on the table when cases are finally resolved. More than 170 attorneys have withdrawn from representing the IRS in cases in US Tax Court since Donald Trump became president in January, according to a Bloomberg Tax analysis. Many have quit the IRS altogether amid a ma...

President Donald Trump's widespread tariffs are boosting tax dispute risks for companies that are scrambling to understand how to factor the new trade duties into their transfer pricing and tax planning without attracting an audit. Tariffs raise the prices of imported goods, meaning companies importing products from their own affiliates may have to—or want to—adjust the pricing of those transactio...

Tax preparers consider themselves foot soldiers on the front lines of Americans' income tax preparations. They provide advice and file the returns, helping the government collect its revenue and make sure people are paying their fair share. They are also some of the first to warn taxpayers about scams. This group of preparers includes enrolled agents, who are the only federally licensed tax practi...

Congress is back in session with just a few weeks to reach an agreement before government funding runs out Sept. 30. For IRS watchers, the lack of agreement on how to fund the tax collection agency or whether to extend expiring tax breaks rank among the key issues lawmakers will grapple with over the coming months. In this week’s episode of Talking Tax, Bloomberg Tax reporter Zach C. Cohen and Blo...

As President Donald Trump's tariffs make waves in the world economy, multinational companies are mulling what it could mean for their intangible assets like intellectual property and brand recognition. The vast majority of corporate value comes from intangibles. In 2020, such assets made up 90% of the value of the S&P 500, according to an often-cited study by IP consultant Ocean Tomo—up from up fr...

Big Four accounting firms are racing to integrate next-generation AI technology across their service lines and develop a talent strategy to match the industry's new era. KPMG is focused on making sure it's balancing efficiency gains because of artificial intelligence with long-term workforce development, according to Sandy Torchia, vice chair of talent and culture at KPMG US. The firm has created...

Proof from an ancient Roman scroll: As long as there have been taxes, there has been tax evasion. When researchers studied a previously mislabeled scroll, they discovered detailed attorney notes for a case against taxpayers accused of using forged documents and sham transactions between the Roman provinces of Judaea and Arabia to escape taxes on their assets. The assets in question were enslaved p...

Pharmaceutical companies are scrambling to respond to the Trump administration's tariff threats, seeking to mitigate duties on their products while keeping the impact on their tax bills to a minimum.   The industry has long leveraged complex transfer pricing arrangements to cut down on its tax bills, but now the looming tariffs could spark a major rethink for where companies make their drugs and t...

One of the most unwanted jobs in Washington is now up for grabs—again. President Donald Trump's IRS commissioner, Billy Long, exited as the head role last week and is expected to be nominated as the ambassador to Iceland. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will fill the job in the interim. The vacancy at the top of the IRS continues the turbulence the agency has experienced since the start of the Tr...

It’s been four months since the Trump administration announced its “Liberation Day” tariffs, and companies are still scrambling to make sense of what it means for their operations and tax planning. Rates keep changing, sometimes day to day, as countries struggle to make lasting trade deals with the US, while corporate tax and customs departments put their heads together to minimize the costs to th...

Millions of taxpayers used to getting paper checks from the Treasury Department will soon have to find another way to get their money as the agency phases out paper refunds. The Treasury will send its final tax refund on a paper check by October, if it stays the course set by President Donald Trump’s March 25 order to transition fully to electronic payments. Tax observers fear that the change coul...

Tax-exempt organizations are closely watching the Trump administration to see if it makes good on its intention to alter standards around claiming tax-free status. The IRS gave a green light to churches speaking about political campaigns and candidates without losing their tax-exempt status, while President Donald Trump publicly threatened Harvard University's tax status because of allegations of...

Tax breaks for whale captains in Alaska and spaceport builders were among the lower-profile perks included in the GOP's $3.4 trillion tax-and-spending law enacted this month. The policies were necessary to gain votes of Republican holdouts, enabling the measure to pass in both the Senate and House in time for GOP lawmakers' self-imposed July 4 deadline. The law moved through Congress faster than m...

Multinational corporations have been hustling to make sense of the flurry of US tariff policy changes this year, and figure out how to factor that into their transfer pricing. One place that's been in this situation before: Latin America. For decades, companies there have been navigating tariffs and the impacts on their tax planning—including transfer pricing, or how companies value transactions b...

The fate of the OECD-led global tax deal was rocked this week after the US and its Group of Seven allies came to an understanding that would exempt American companies from two key parts of the global minimum tax framework. G7 countries agreed to the exemption over the weekend in exchange for Congress removing Section 899 from its tax-and-spending bill—a provision referred to as the "revenge tax" t...

Congress is reconsidering the accounting guardrails it put in place more than two decades ago to ensure investors can trust the revenues and asset values listed companies publish. Republican budget proposals would abolish the US audit regulator and reassign its work to the Securities and Exchange Commission. While lawmakers negotiate over what will end up in a final version of their tax and spendi...

The Republican-led Senate Finance Committee unveiled its portion of the mammoth tax-and-spending legislation that's quickly moving through Congress, and there's a lot to unpack. The Senate bill has dozens of differences from the House version. It makes several business breaks permanent, softens the excise tax on university endowments, and phases out more slowly cuts to clean energy credits, while...

Recent layoff announcements at Big Four accounting, tax, and consulting firms come as the industry faces economic uncertainty and a shrinking talent pool. The accounting profession is at a crossroads as a new class of students graduate. While recent data shows heightened interest in both undergraduate and master's degree programs, the industry faces possible disruptions like workforce reductions a...

The “revenge” tax provision that’s in the giant tax bill working its way through Congress has a lot of people worried. Known as Section 899, the provision would impose stiff, retaliatory tax rates on companies and people from countries that the US deems to be imposing "unfair" and "discriminatory" taxes against US companies. It was included in the version of the bill House Republicans narrowly pas...

Companies scored wins after the House passed a multi-trillion-dollar tax bill that largely preserved the current tax rates on foreign-earned income. Republicans' 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act created a new international tax regime including a minimum tax on global intangible low-taxed income, or GILTI, a reduced tax rate on foreign-derived intangible income, or FDII, and a base erosion and anti-abuse...

House Republicans are moving quickly to get a massive tax-and-spending package across the finish line before week's end even as they negotiate with party factions over outstanding concerns. Some Republicans are demanding deeper cuts to social programs like Medicaid to curb deficits as part of the deal and to reduce the package's cost to extend the 2017 tax overhaul. And yet the bill increases the...