VeriSign Inc., which operates Internet infrastructure, is planning to bring home between $700 million and $800 million in 2014. The company will offset the tax cost by pairing it with benefits from another deduction, George Kilguss, the chief financial officer, told analysts Feb. 6.
Obama, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp and Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden all support lowering the corporate rate and making significant changes to the taxation of foreign income.
Foreign Income
Camp, a Michigan Republican, released a draft plan Feb. 26 to lower the corporate tax rate to 25 percent. He would exempt most foreign income from U.S. taxes and make it harder to shift profits to low-tax countries.
His plan would impose a one-time tax on the accumulated profits -- 8.75 percent for cash and equivalents and 3.5 percent for everything else. The money would be used to pay for permanent changes to the international tax system and would flow into the Highway Trust Fund.
Obama’s budget calls for $276 billion in additional revenue from U.S. multinationals over the next decade. Obama wants a corporate tax rate of 28 percent and a global minimum tax. One- time revenue from tax changes would cover one-time spending on infrastructure.
“In some ways you can say there’s convergence,” Ray Beeman, a senior aide to Camp, said March 7 on a KPMG LLP webcast. “In other ways, there is still a fundamental difference.”
No Vote
None of the plans has received a vote in a congressional committee.
Democrats say plans like Camp’s could encourage U.S. companies to locate even more operations outside the country. Doggett says he worries that the prospect of a quick infusion of cash for highways could push Congress to offer a low tax rate for companies after the 2014 election.