Double Taxation

Section 6-5 of the tax law says that a person assessable income includes all their ordinary income derived during the year. To be said from the view of tax law (s. 6-5 of the ITAA), it hasn’t specified any definitions about Ordinary Income (OI). Section 6-10 then says that a person assessable income also includes other amount that are not ordinary income but which are included in your assessable income by provisions in tax law about assessable income, or the amounts that a person receives as a reward for performing, amounts that a person receives which are a return on the person’s investment, amounts that a person receives which are profits from carrying on a business.

For example, if the tax rate is seven percent and one person makes one thousand dollars they would pay seventy dollars to the government. While someone that only made one hundred dollars would pay seven dollars to the government; this they may deem unfair.

One tax issue that presents no problem for a U.S. investor is the question of crediting taxes it has paid to a foreign country against taxes it would have to pay the U.S. on its federal return.

However, the companies only have to pay the U.S. tax for foreign revenues once they bring the profits back to the United States. As a result of these current tax laws, U.S. companies that seek to avoid high corporate tax rates hold their foreign earned profits overseas. “It just makes no sense to pay a substantial tax on it,” said Joseph Kennedy, a senior fellow at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (Rubin, R.). It is far too easy for an IT corporation to create a patent in a foreign country and direct revenue to a corporation within that country, thus avoiding the much higher U.S. tax rates. According to Joint Committee on Taxation estimates, the lost revenue is increasing over time as corporations find even more creative ways to make their U.S. profits look like offshore income (Richards, K., & Craig, J.). As result, multinational American corporations have as much as $2 trillion held in overseas subsidiaries and if brought into the United States with the current tax laws, the federal government could benefit by nearly $50 billion per year.

The main objective of many companies is to minimize their tax obligations. Jeffers (2014) discussed the reason of why companies adopt tax inversion strategies. The researcher indicated that the income maximization is a major reason of companies attempting to reduce their tax liability (pp. 100-101). Tax inversion strategies provide companies an advantage to lower income tax rate. Today, U.S. corporations renounce its U.S. citizenship and move to low-tax countries. Companies that reincorporate oversees are not obligated to pay U.S. taxes on earning income (p. 99). Many countries implement tax competition strategies to attract and retain businesses. Well-known companies, such as Exxon Mobil, Hewlett Packard, Tyco, General Electric, PepsiCo, etc. take benefits of tax shelter opportunities overseas (p. 102). Other benefits of the jurisdiction abroad are flexible banking laws and simplified litigation processes.

A sustainable budget with crackdowns on tax avoidance and loopholes, address the issue of tax avoidance that are cause by legal

Host countries laws specifically on taxes and repatriation of profits might affect due to political reforms in their country. (Fox, 2015)

However, the introduction of such a law becomes increasingly difficult when the companies being questioned are some of the largest and wealthiest in the world. In order to truly understand the stature of these companies, one would need to look into some of the statistics regarding them. Remarkably, according to Al Jazeera America “the largest 500 U.S. companies would owe an estimated $620 billion in U.S. taxes” if they had to declare all their overseas stockpiles, of around $2.1 trillion (“Al Jazeera America”). In addition, it found that “three-quarters of the 500 biggest companies utilize tax havens”. The top three offenders included Apple, General Electric and Microsoft. In many cases according to the report, the money is not being utilized to improve foreign economies. By this they mean to say that, U.S. businesses were not using their overseas profit to build factories and employ individuals. Instead, the overseas profit was a result of accounting tricks purposely implemented to benefit the business alone. To put all of this in perspective, the United States is losing billions of dollars to foreign economies. These taxes are being introduced into countries such as Ireland and Luxembourg. In other words the money that should be invested in the United States of America on public services, is being

➢ Taxation – firms functioning when dealing with a different country the subject to that country’s laws and regulations.

The income earned by the U.S. individuals and corporations in the foreign countries or foreign source are taxed by the U.S. government, even though other countries also tax any income earned within their borders. To offset this double taxation of income by two different countries, the U.S. grants both individuals and corporations a foreign tax credit (FTC) that can be used to offset income taxes assessed by a foreign country on the income earned there (Foreign Tax Credit, FTC, n.d.). The FTC is allowable for foreign income taxes and other similar taxes, such as excess profit and war profit taxes. However, only income taxes qualify for the credit. The Value Added Taxes (VAT) and property, sales and severance taxes do not qualify, although they may be deductible.

Politics is the process in which negotiation and resistance is utilized to establish a stable society. In contrast, the current United States tax system fails to form such solid grounds. Without such a complex system, anarchy and chaos will overrule the goal of fairness that is favorable to people. Taxation is a branch of politics that is distorted in some ways in which it does not satisfy many people’s needs. Although a government is designed to run an organized society and meet the needs of citizens, it does not always do a great job. Many people feel that their place in the financial world grants them immunity from excessive taxes while others feel they are being hurt by such an unequal tax burden. The purpose of taxes is to benefit society as a whole and keep the government running, but it is not working properly and efficiently. People’s various situations make it difficult to implement the current tax system. Taxation has long been deliberated, and the issue holds many points, such as income, a person’s age, and where they live, these circumstances are unequal and unfair to many people.

If it is included, then profit will be decreased. The Fifth and Eighth Circuits have taken an approach that foreign taxes are not economic costs and should not be deducted from pretax profit. However, in the Second Circuit, the court in BNY concluded that the objective prong of the economic substance test requires the inclusion of foreign taxes in both a calculation of pre-tax profit and a consideration of the transaction’s overall economic effect. The court supports its decision with the congressional intent that foreign tax credits are to “facilitate global commerce by making the IRS indifferent as to whether a business transaction occurs in this country or in another, not to facilitate international tax arbitrage.” Taking into consideration the tax spread, the Bx payment, and the U.K. taxes paid by the trust, the transaction does not generate profit and thus fails the objective prong of the

In addition to economic issues, taxation is also a political issue. Political leaders formulate tax policies to bring reforms in the taxation system in order to promote their agendas. The major tax reforms include: increasing or decreasing the tax rate, imposing new taxes on certain products and changing the definition of taxable income. It is evident from the research studies that no one deliberately wants to pay taxes. U.S’ tax policy reflects expression of influence - i.e., those who have power are successful in paying low taxes and their burden is shifted to people who have no power. Therefore retired individuals, small business owners and farmers find ways efforts to reduce their tax burden. Since its existence, tax policy has been enormously used for promoting political and economic agendas.

Intercompany transactions could occur across national borders, it would lead MNC companies to get more exposure to the differences of the tax regulations between countries. This might lead MNC companies to set up their objective to minimize their taxes through the use of discretionary transfer prices. These issues are attracted the attention of the member of the U.S. senate, foreign governments and international organization such as the OECD, G20 and European Union (EU).

A tax haven is a country that offers foreign corporations and individuals relatively low corporate and income tax rates, with a politically and economically stable environment. Some tax havens are Switzerland, Hong Kong, Bermuda, Ireland, and the Cayman Islands. Although the businesses have moved across seas, the United States forces them to pay the corporate tax. Fortunately for the businesses, it they keep their income and money across seas they do not have to the pay the American corporate tax, Unfortunately this is ghastly for the United States Government businesses keep their products and profits over seas.