Talking Tax

Pandora's box got flung wide open this week, and secrets about how global billionaires and politicians stash their assets came spilling out.

The Pandora Papers are a giant leak of millions of financial documents, reported by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. They show how many ultra-wealthy people and global leaders are using offshore trusts and other financial entities to store huge amounts of the assets they own.

On this episode of our weekly Talking Tax podcast, reporter Michael Rapoport hears two very divergent views on what should be done about this.

We hear from Christian Hallum, tax policy lead for the charity and advocacy group Oxfam International, who decries the practices detailed in the documents and says they perpetuate global inequality. And we also speak with Josh Rubenstein, a trusts and estates attorney and national chair of the private wealth department at Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP, who worries that a crackdown could ultimately invade the privacy of law-abiding people who use trusts to manage their wealth.

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In the field of accounting, the robots have most definitely arrived.

Front-line accountants may already use some of type of bot, also known as robotics process automation, or RPA. Or maybe they would love to have a bot on their team. Others, of course, may be a bit fearful that automation is going to erase their jobs.

To sort out how RPA works, and is evolving, we turned to Loreal Jiles, vice president for research at the Institute of Management Accountants. She previously led an RPA program overseeing both professionals and bots.

Bloomberg Tax's Amanda Iacone spoke with Jiles about how RPA can help take tedious and repetitive tasks out of an accountant's day—with no programming experience required.

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The House Ways and Means Committee passed a proposal last week to revamp the way U.S. multinationals pay taxes—but to a lesser extent than other Democratic plans on the table.

The proposal—part of a broader tax package to help fund Democrats' planned spending of up to $3.5 trillion—would increase the minimum tax on U.S. companies' foreign income and get tougher in other ways on those that do business overseas. It is more modest in some respects than what President Joe Biden and Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee have proposed.

On this episode of our weekly Talking Tax podcast, senior reporter Michael Rapoport discusses the House plan with Craig Hillier, the Americas international tax and transaction tax services leader for accounting firm EY. Hillier explains the details of the House proposal and discusses its chances in a narrowly divided Congress. He also talks about how the plan meshes with the pending global tax overhaul agreement among countries at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The House Ways and Means Committee approved its portion of a multi-trillion dollar economic and social spending plan this week. But despite this latest victory, Democrats still have a lot of work to do before their aspirations become law.

The House tax plan doesn't include some of President Joe Biden's notable proposals, including an overhaul of the way unrealized capital gains are treated at death. The tax plan advanced by Ways and Means also aims for more modest hikes to the corporate and capital gains rates than Biden has been seeking.

On this week's episode of our weekly Talking Tax podcast, senior reporter Colin Wilhelm discusses the state of play with two Bracewell LLP lobbyists who have a depth of knowledge on the issues: Yasmin Nelson, former senior policy advisor to then-Sen. Kamala Harris,, and colleague Liam Donovan, a former Republican campaign operative who now works on tax and energy issues as well as providing multi-platform political commentary.

Nelson and Donovan break down the opposition to the capital gains overhaul, how a troubled prescription drug pricing proposal impacts the overall revenue picture, and what is happening over on the Senate side of the Capitol.

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Four years after enactment of the 2017 tax law, the ramifications of Congress' tax code overhaul can be felt thousands of miles away in Ireland, as firms are no longer using the Emerald Isle to shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions.

New research by a leading Irish economist shows that many U.S. multinationals are sending outbound payments from Ireland directly to the U.S., rather than to zero- or low-tax jurisdictions.

On this episode of our weekly Talking Tax podcast, Seamus Coffey, a lecturer at University College Cork in Ireland talks about how companies are being encouraged to hold intellectual property in places where they have actual economic activity.

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Workers across the U.S. are reconsidering their careers at this stage of the pandemic, looking for new job opportunities that offer better pay, benefits, remote work, and other flexibility.

The trend, which some have dubbed "The Great Resignation," raises many questions about 401(k) and health savings accounts, jurisdictional taxes, and other tax-related issues.

On this episode of our weekly Talking Tax podcast, Bloomberg Tax reporter Jeffery Leon spoke with Eric Bronnenkant, the head of tax at investment advice company Betterment. Bronnenkant talked about why the Great Resignation is happening and the retirement and investment considerations that job seekers should consider when looking at new opportunities.

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College football season starts this weekend and this will be the first year in which the players suiting up can earn significant income off of their name, image, and likeness. Partially in response to losing a case at the Supreme Court, the NCAA this summer lifted its longstanding ban on its student athletes generating this type of revenue for themselves.

Though it may not be something most sports fans are thinking about, these newly wealthy athletes, many still in their teens, will run into a host of tax issues if they're not careful. To learn more about this, Bloomberg Tax reporter Sam McQuillan spoke with John Karaffa, the head of ProSport CPA— a firm that specializes in working with athletes—for our weekly Talking Tax podcast.

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The Senate-passed infrastructure bill aims to revive nineties-era taxes on chemical companies and importers to pay for cleaning up some of the nation's most contaminated sites.

While the bill still needs to clear the House, the chemicals industry claims the Superfund tax provisions are unfair because they impact a small subset of the industrial sectors that contributed to pollution. But advocates say the return of the "polluters pay" doctrine is a step in the right direction to clean up toxic sites.

On this week’s episode of our podcast, Talking Tax, corporate tax reporter David Hood talks to Steve Jawetz, a principal at the environmental law firm Beveridge and Diamond PC who argues the tax is unfairly targeted. David also talks to Danielle Melgar, an advocate with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group’s "Zero Out Toxics” program, about how this tax is a victory for environmental groups.

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The Senate-passed infrastructure bill includes contentious cryptocurrency tax reporting requirements that the industry is hoping to change when the bill is considered by the House.

The requirements would apply to brokers, such as U.S. exchanges, but the industry says the current language is too broad and would hit intermediaries, like software developers and miners, who don't have access to the information they would be required to report.

On this week’s episode of our podcast, Talking Tax, senior reporter Allyson Versprille talks to Denise Hintzke, a leader in Deloitte's Global Information Reporting practice.

They discuss the impact the reporting requirements would have on the industry and how companies are preparing for the possible changes.

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Investors interested in how companies meet environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards are also becoming increasingly interested in where—and whether—a company is paying tax.

Witold Henisz, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and founder of the ESG Analytics Lab, argues that tax payments are a critical indicator of a company's broader social impact, and should be factored in to ESG conversations.

On this week's episode of our podcast, Talking Tax, Henisz talks to reporter David Hood about how investors are turning to local disclosures to assemble "bespoke data" showing a company's tax burden and payments and why companies will likely face mounting pressure to disclose that type of information. Listen to the episode here.

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