Tuesday

President Obama unveiled a new broad plan to go after offshore tax havens used by US companies. Here’s what I think – The proposal to tax income derived from foreign activities is at odds with the tax policies of most of the Western world and profoundly at odds with Anglo-American ideas of due process. Most industrialized countries realize that multi-national corporations headquartered in those countries will have foreign facilities that will generate income in another country. They also recognize that income tax will be paid to the taxing authorities of those countries. So, just as Great Britain will forego collecting taxes on sales of a Roll Royce in the U.S., if the income from the sales stays here, the U.S. can and will tax that income. But now, if the Obama legislation becomes law, sales of GM (if it survives the summer) cars in Great Britain will be taxed by the IRS, even if the income stays in Great Britain. That will reduce the share of taxes that Great Britain can collect. As well, since the abominable IRS was created in 1917, American taxpayers, individual and corporate, have prepared their own taxes. If the IRS disagrees with what the taxpayer submits, it can challenge the submission; and in that challenge, the IRS must prove that the taxpayer was wrong. Not so under the new legislation. If it becomes law as written, once the IRS has identified foreign income, it becomes the taxpayers’ burden to prove why it should not be taxed. That stands 600 years of Anglo-American jurisprudence (the presumption of innocence, the government’s burden of proving its case, the right of the accused to remain silent) on its head. Where will this madness end?