In March, the IRS issued proposed regulations that cover determining the amount of the deduction for foreign-derived intangible income (FDII) and global intangible low-taxed income (GILTI). The regs also coordinate the FDII and GILTI deduction with other tax provisions. Here’s an overview.
Background
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) established a “participation exemption system” under which certain earnings of a foreign corporation can be repatriated to a corporate U.S. shareholder without U.S. tax. (This occurs under Internal Revenue Code Section 245A.) (more…)
The IRS announced it will begin to ramp down its Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program (OVDP) and close it on Sept. 28, 2018. This gives taxpayers with undisclosed foreign financial accounts time to still use the program.
“Taxpayers have had several years to come into compliance with U.S. tax laws under this program,” said Acting IRS Commissioner David Kautter. “All along, we have been clear that we would close the program at the appropriate time, and we have reached that point. Those who still wish to come forward have time to do so.” The current OVDP began in 2014 and is a modified version of the OVDP launched in 2012, which followed similar voluntary programs offered in 2011 and 2009. The programs have enabled U.S. taxpayers to voluntarily resolve past noncompliance related to failure to report foreign financial assets and file foreign information returns. (more…)
A loophole in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) could allow multinational corporations like Apple to avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes on profits stashed overseas.
The TCJA imposes a transition tax on untaxed foreign earnings of foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies by deeming those earnings to be repatriated. But the law contains a loophole that allows taxpayers to convert income that would otherwise be taxed at 15.5% (cash holdings) into income that is taxed at 8% (more illiquid investments).
And multinationals could have leeway to shift foreign earnings into the 8% tax bracket. (more…)
Digital companies in the European Union (EU) pay less than half the amount of tax that other companies pay, the European Commission said in a report. The EU needs a modern tax framework to seize digital opportunities, while also ensuring fair taxation, the report added.
Within the EU, international businesses typically pay a 10.1% tax rate while traditional companies pay 23.3%, due largely to the difficulty of taxing digital assets, which are typically Internet-based. This is particularly important given that more than half of the world’s top 20 companies are technology-based. The Commission stated that the best solution to address this distortion would be on a global level, but in the absence of sufficient progress, the EU should move ahead alone. (more…)
The U.S. Tax Court has held that a commercial airline pilot stationed in South Korea failed both the “tax home” and the “bona fide residence” tests that determine whether a taxpayer qualifies for the foreign earned income exclusion.
The pilot flew airplanes for Korean Air Lines (KAL) in 2011 and 2012. KAL considered him to be stationed in Incheon, Korea, which meant that Incheon was the airport he most frequently operated from. (more…)
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released the key document that forms the basis of the peer review of the base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) minimum standard on preventing inappropriate treaty shopping.
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The Tax Court ruled that certain payments received by a U.S. citizen working abroad from a foreign taxing authority were in fact refunds under the Internal Revenue Code.
Facts of the case
A U.S. citizen worked for the London office of Goldman Sachs and received employee compensation from which United Kingdom income tax was withheld. The taxpayer filed both U.S. and UK income tax returns for each year at issue. On a timely filed U.S. return for each year, she claimed a foreign tax credit in an amount equivalent to the UK tax withheld by her employer.
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The IRS Large Business and International (LB&I) division has released its widely anticipated new audit strategy known as “campaigns.”
The LB&I is moving toward issue-based examinations. “This approach makes use of IRS knowledge and deploys the right resources to address those issues,” the IRS stated.
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In a further indication of the IRS’s continued focus on international tax issues, the tax agency updated an International Practice Unit (IPU) summarizing the calculation and recapture of foreign and domestic losses and their impact on the foreign tax credit.
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