You are given two reports by the government agency.  

Report 1:
The 116 th Congress may consider a variety of housing-related issues. These may involve assisted housing programs, such as those administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and issues related to housing finance, among other things. Specific topics of interest may include ongoing issues such as interest in reforming the nation's housing finance system, how to prioritize appropriations for federal housing programs in a limited funding environment, oversight of the implementation of changes to certain housing programs that were enacted in prior Congresses, and the possibility of extending certain temporary housing-related tax provisions. Additional issues may emerge as the Congress progresses. This report provides a high-level overview of the most prominent housing-related issues that may be of interest during the 116 th . It is meant to provide a broad overview of major issues and is not intended to provide detailed information or analysis. However, it includes references to more in-depth CRS reports on these issues where possible. This section provides background on housing and mortgage market conditions to provide context for the housing policy issues discussed in the remainder of the report. This discussion of market conditions is at the national level. However, it is important to be aware that local housing market conditions can vary dramatically, and national housing market trends may not reflect the conditions in a specific area. Nevertheless, national housing market indicators can provide an overall sense of general trends in housing. In general, rising home prices, relatively low interest rates, and rising rental costs have been prominent features of housing and mortgage markets in recent years. Although interest rates have remained low, rising house prices and rental costs that in many cases have outpaced income growth have led to increased concerns about housing affordability for both prospective homebuyers and renters. Most homebuyers take out a mortgage to purchase a home. Therefore, owner-occupied housing markets and the mortgage market are closely linked, although they are not the same. The ability of prospective homebuyers to obtain mortgages, and the costs of those mortgages, impact housing demand and affordability. The following subsections show current trends in selected owner-occupied housing and mortgage market indicators. As shown in Figure 1 , nationally, nominal house prices have been increasing on a year-over-year basis in each quarter since the beginning of 2012, with year-over-year increases exceeding 5% for much of that time period and exceeding 6% for most quarters since mid-2016. These increases follow almost five years of house price declines in the years during and surrounding the economic recession of 2007-2009 and associated housing market turmoil. House price increases slowed somewhat during 2018, but year-over-year house prices still increased by nearly 6% during the fourth quarter of 2018. House prices, and changes in house prices, vary greatly across local housing markets. Some areas of the country are experiencing rapid increases in house prices, while other areas are experiencing slower or stagnating house price growth. Similarly, prices have fully regained or even exceeded their pre-recession levels in nominal terms in many parts of the country, but in other areas prices remain below those levels. House price increases affect participants in the housing market differently. Rising prices reduce affordability for prospective homebuyers, but they are generally beneficial for current homeowners due to the increased home equity that accompanies them (although rising house prices also have the potential to negatively impact affordability for current homeowners through increased property taxes). For several years, mortgage interest rates have been low by historical standards. Lower interest rates increase mortgage affordability and make it easier for some households to purchase homes or refinance their existing mortgages. As shown in Figure 2 , average mortgage interest rates have been consistently below 5% since May 2010 and have been below 4% for several stretches during that time. After starting to increase somewhat in late 2017 and much of 2018, mortgage interest rates showed declines at the end of 2018 into early 2019. The average mortgage interest rate for February 2019 was 4.37%, compared to 4.46% in the previous month and 4.33% a year earlier. House prices have been rising for several years on a national basis, and mortgage interest rates, while still low by historical standards, have also risen for certain stretches. While incomes have also been rising in recent years, helping to mitigate some affordability pressures, on the whole house price increases have outpaced income increases. These trends have led to increased concerns about the affordability of owner-occupied housing. Despite rising house prices, many metrics of housing affordability suggest that owner-occupied housing is currently relatively affordable. These metrics generally measure the share of income that a median-income family would need to qualify for a mortgage to purchase a median-priced home, subject to certain assumptions. Therefore, rising incomes and, especially, interest rates that are still low by historical standards contribute to monthly mortgage payments being considered affordable under these measures despite recent house price increases. However, some factors that affect housing affordability may not be captured by these metrics. For example, several of the metrics are based on certain assumptions (such as a borrower making a 20% down payment) that may not apply to many households. Furthermore, because they typically measure the affordability of monthly mortgage payments, they often do not take into account other affordability challenges that homebuyers may face, such as affording a down payment and other upfront costs of purchasing a home (costs that generally increase as home prices rise). Other factors—such as the ability to qualify for a mortgage, the availability of homes on the market, and regional differences in house prices and income—may also make homeownership less attainable for some households.  Some of these factors may have a bigger impact on affordability for specific demographic groups, as income trends and housing preferences are not uniform across all segments of the population. Given that house price increases are showing some signs of slowing and interest rates have remained low, the affordability of owner-occupied homes may hold steady or improve. Such trends could potentially impact housing market activity, including home sales. In general, annual home sales have been increasing since 2014 and have improved from their levels during the housing market turmoil of the late 2000s, although in 2018 the overall number of home sales declined from the previous year. While home sales have been improving somewhat in recent years (prior to falling in 2018), the supply of homes on the market has generally not been keeping pace with the demand for homes, thereby limiting home sales activity and contributing to house price increases. Home sales include sales of both existing and newly built homes. Existing home sales generally number in the millions each year, while new home sales are usually in the hundreds of thousands.  Figure 3 shows the annual number of existing and new home sales for each year from 1995 through 2018. Existing home sales numbered about 5.3 million in 2018, a decline from 5.5 million in 2017 (existing home sales in 2017 were the highest level since 2006). New home sales numbered about 622,000 in 2018, an increase from 614,000 in 2017 and the highest level since 2007. However, the number of new home sales remains appreciably lower than in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when they tended to be between 800,000 and 1 million per year. The number and types of homes on the market affect home sales and home prices. On a national basis, the supply of homes on the market has been relatively low in recent years, and in general new construction has not been creating enough new homes to meet demand. However, as noted previously, national housing market indicators are not necessarily indicative of local conditions. While many areas of the country are experiencing low levels of housing inventory that contribute to higher home prices, other areas, particularly those experiencing population declines, face a different set of housing challenges, including surplus housing inventory and higher levels of vacant homes. On a national basis, the inventory of homes on the market has been below historical averages in recent years, though the inventory, of new homes in particular, has begun to increase somewhat of late. Homes come onto the market through the construction of new homes and when current homeowners decide to sell their existing homes. Existing homeowners' decisions to sell their homes can be influenced by expectations about housing inventory and affordability. For example, current homeowners may choose not to sell if they are uncertain about finding new homes that meet their needs, or if their interest rates on new mortgages would be substantially higher than the interest rates on their current mortgages. New construction activity is influenced by a variety of factors including labor, materials, and other costs as well as the expected demand for new homes. One measure of the amount of new construction is housing starts. Housing starts are the number of new housing units on which construction is started in a given period and are typically reported monthly as a "seasonally adjusted annual rate." This means that the number of housing starts reported for a given month (1) has been adjusted to account for seasonal factors and (2) has been multiplied by 12 to reflect what the annual number of housing starts would be if the current month's pace continued for an entire year. Figure 4 shows the seasonally adjusted rate of starts on one-unit homes for each month from January 1995 through December 2018. Housing starts for single-family homes fell during the housing market turmoil, reflecting decreased home purchase demand. In recent years, levels of new construction have remained relatively low by historical standards, reflecting a variety of considerations including labor shortages and the cost of building. Housing starts have generally been increasing since about 2012, but remain well below their levels from the late 1990s through the mid-2000s. For 2018, the seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts averaged about 868,000. In comparison, the seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts exceeded 1 million from the late 1990s through the mid-2000s. Furthermore, high housing construction costs have led to a greater share of new housing being built at the more expensive end of the market. To the extent that new homes are concentrated at higher price points, supply and price pressures may be exacerbated for lower-priced homes. When a lender originates a mortgage, it can choose to hold that mortgage in its own portfolio, sell it to a private company, or sell it to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, two congressionally chartered government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs). Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bundle mortgages into securities and guarantee investors' payments on those securities. Furthermore, a mortgage might be insured by a federal government agency, such as the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) or the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Most FHA-insured or VA-guaranteed mortgages are included in mortgage-backed securities that are guaranteed by Ginnie Mae, another government agency. The shares of mortgages that are provided through each of these channels may be relevant to policymakers because of their implications for mortgage access and affordability as well as the federal government's exposure to risk. As shown in Figure 5 , during the first three quarters of 2018, about two-thirds of the total dollar volume of mortgages originated was either backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac (45%) or guaranteed by a federal agency such as FHA or VA (22%). Nearly one-third of the dollar volume of mortgages originated was held in bank portfolios, while close to 2% was included in a private-label security without government backing. The shares of mortgage originations backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and held in bank portfolios are roughly similar to their respective shares in the early 2000s. The share of private-label securitization has been, and continues to be, very small since the housing market turmoil of the late 2000s, while the FHA/VA share is higher than it was in the early and mid-2000s. The share of mortgages insured by FHA or guaranteed by VA was low by historical standards during that time period as many households opted for other types of mortgages, including subprime mortgages. As has been the case in owner-occupied housing markets, affordability has been a prominent concern in rental markets in recent years. In the years since the housing market turmoil of the late 2000s, the number and share of renter households has increased, leading to lower rental vacancy rates and higher rents in many markets. The housing and mortgage market turmoil of the late 2000s led to a substantial decrease in the homeownership rate and a corresponding increase in the share of households who rent their homes. As shown in Figure 6 , the share of renters increased from about 31% in 2005 and 2006 to a high of about 36.6% in 2016, before decreasing slightly to 36.1% in 2017 and continuing to decline to 35.6% in 2018. The homeownership rate correspondingly fell from a high of 69% in the mid-2000s to 63.4% in 2016, before rising to 63.9% in 2017 and continuing to rise to 64.4% in 2018. The overall number of occupied housing units also increased over this time period, from nearly 110 million in 2006 to 121 million in 2018; most of this increase has been in renter-occupied units. The number of renter-occupied units increased from about 34 million in 2006 to about 43 million in 2018. The number of owner-occupied housing units fell from about 75 million units in 2006 to about 74 million in 2014, but has since increased to about 78 million units in 2018. The higher number and share of renter households has had implications for rental vacancy rates and rental housing costs. More renter households increases competition for rental housing, which may in turn drive up rents if there is not enough new rental housing created (whether through new construction or conversion of owner-occupied units to rental units) to meet the increased demand. As shown in Figure 7 , the rental vacancy rate has generally declined in recent years and was under 7% at the end of 2018. Rental housing affordability is impacted by a variety of factors, including the supply of rental housing units available, the characteristics of those units (e.g., age and amenities), and the demand for available units. New housing units have been added to the rental stock in recent years through both construction of new rental units and conversions of existing owner-occupied units to rental housing. However, the supply of rental housing has not necessarily kept pace with the demand, particularly among lower-cost rental units, and low vacancy rates have been especially pronounced in less-expensive units. The increased demand for rental housing, as well as the concentration of new rental construction in higher-cost units, has led to increases in rents in recent years. Median renter incomes have also been increasing for the last several years, at times outpacing increases in rents. However, over the longer term, median rents have increased faster than renter incomes, reducing rental affordability. Rising rental costs and renter incomes that are not keeping up with rent increases over the long term can contribute to housing affordability problems, particularly for households with lower incomes. Under one common definition, housing is considered to be affordable if a household is paying no more than 30% of its income in housing costs. Under this definition, households that pay more than 30% are considered to be cost-burdened, and those that pay more than 50% are considered to be severely cost-burdened. The overall number of cost-burdened renter households has increased from 14.8 million in 2001 to 20.5 million in 2017, although the 20.5 million in 2017 represented a decrease from 20.8 million in 2016 and over 21 million in 2014 and 2015. (Over this time period, the overall number of renter households has increased as well.) While housing cost burdens can affect households of all income levels, they are most prevalent among the lowest-income households. In 2017, 83% of renter households with incomes below $15,000 experienced housing cost burdens, and 72% experienced severe cost burdens. A shortage of lower-cost rental units that are both available and affordable to extremely low-income renter households (households that earn no more than 30% of area median income), in particular, contributes to these cost burdens. A variety of housing-related issues may be of interest to the 116 th Congress, including housing finance, housing assistance programs, and housing-related tax provisions, among other things. Many of these are ongoing or perennial housing-related issues, though additional issues may emerge as the Congress progresses. Two major players in the U.S. housing finance system are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) that were created by Congress to provide liquidity to the mortgage market. By law, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac cannot make mortgages; rather, they are restricted to purchasing mortgages that meet certain requirements from lenders. Once the GSEs purchase a mortgage, they either package it with others into a mortgage-backed security (MBS), which they guarantee and sell to institutional investors (which can be the mortgage originator), or retain it as a portfolio investment. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are involved in both single-family and multifamily housing, though their single-family businesses are much larger. In 2008, in the midst of housing and mortgage market turmoil, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac experienced financial trouble and entered voluntary conservatorship overseen by their regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). As part of the legal arrangements of this conservatorship, the Department of the Treasury contracted to purchase a maximum of $200 billion of new senior preferred stock from each of the GSEs; in return for this support, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pay dividends on this stock to Treasury. These funds become general revenues. Several issues related to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could be of interest to the 116 th Congress. These include the potential for legislative housing finance reform, new leadership at FHFA and the potential for administrative changes to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and certain issues that could affect Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's finances and mortgage standards, respectively. For more information on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, see CRS Report R44525, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in Conservatorship: Frequently Asked Questions . Since Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac entered conservatorship in 2008, policymakers have largely agreed on the need for comprehensive housing finance reform legislation that would resolve the conservatorships of these GSEs and address the underlying issues that are perceived to have led to their financial trouble and conservatorships. Such legislation could eliminate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, possibly replacing them with other entities; retain the companies but transform their role in the housing finance system; or return them to their previous status with certain changes. In addition to addressing the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, housing finance reform legislation could potentially involve changes to the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) or other federal programs that support the mortgage market. While there is generally broad agreement on certain principles of housing finance reform—such as increasing the private sector's role in the mortgage market, reducing government risk, and maintaining access to affordable mortgages for creditworthy households—there is disagreement over how best to achieve these objectives and over the technical details of how a restructured housing finance system should operate. Since 2008, a variety of housing finance reform proposals have been put forward by Members of Congress, think tanks, and industry groups. Proposals differ on structural questions as well as on specific implementation issues, such as whether, and how, certain affordable housing requirements that currently apply to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be included in a new system. Previous Congresses have considered housing finance reform legislation in varying degrees. In the 113 th Congress, the House Committee on Financial Services and Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs considered different versions of comprehensive housing finance reform legislation, but none were ultimately enacted. The 114 th  Congress considered a number of more-targeted reforms to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but did not actively consider comprehensive housing finance reform legislation. At the end of the 115 th Congress, the House Committee on Financial Services held a hearing on a draft housing finance reform bill released by then-Chairman Jeb Hensarling and then-Representative John Delaney, but no further action was taken on it. In the 116 th Congress, Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Chairman Mike Crapo has released an outline for potential housing finance reform legislation. The committee held hearings on March 26 and March 27, 2019 on the outline. FHFA, an independent agency, is the regulator for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Bank System as well as the conservator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The director of FHFA is appointed by the President, subject to Senate confirmation, for a five-year term. The term of FHFA Director Mel Watt expired in January 2019. President Trump nominated Mark Calabria to be the next FHFA director. The Senate confirmed the nomination on April 4, 2019, and Dr. Calabria was sworn in on April 15, 2019. FHFA has relatively wide latitude to make many changes to Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's operations without congressional approval, though it is subject to certain statutory constraints. In recent years, for example, FHFA has directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to engage in risk-sharing transactions, develop a common securitization platform for issuing mortgage-backed securities, and undertake certain pilot programs. The prospect of new leadership at FHFA led many to speculate about possible administrative changes that FHFA could make to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac going forward. Any such changes could potentially lead to congressional interest and oversight. FHFA could make many changes to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, including changes to the pricing of mortgages they purchase, to their underwriting standards, or to certain product offerings. It could also make changes to pilot programs, start laying the groundwork for a post-conservatorship housing finance system, or take a different implementation approach to certain affordable housing initiatives required by statute, such as Duty to Serve requirements. Because the new FHFA director has been critical of certain aspects of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the past, some have expressed concerns that the new leadership could result in the agency taking steps to reduce Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's role in the mortgage market. In March 2019, nearly 30 industry groups sent a letter to Acting Director Otting urging that FHFA proceed cautiously with any administrative changes to ensure that they do not disrupt the mortgage market. That same month, President Trump issued a memorandum directing the Secretary of the Treasury to work with other executive branch agencies to develop a plan to end the GSEs' conservatorship, among other goals. Certain other issues related to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may be of interest during the 116 th Congress. A new accounting standard (current expected credit loss, or CECL) that could require the GSEs to increase their loan loss reserves goes into effect in 2020. CECL could result in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac needing to draw on their support agreements with Treasury. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act ( P.L. 111-203 ) requires mortgage lenders to document and verify a borrower's ability to repay (ATR). If a mortgage lacks certain risky features and a lender complies with the ATR regulations, the mortgage is considered to be a qualified mortgage (QM), which provides the lender certain protections against lawsuits claiming that the ATR requirements were not met. Mortgages purchased by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac currently have an exemption (known as the QM Patch) from the debt-to-income ratio ATR rule. This exemption expires in early 2021 (or earlier if Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac exit conservatorship before that date). For several years, concern in Congress about federal budget deficits has led to increased interest in reducing the amount of discretionary funding provided each year through the annual appropriations process. This interest manifested most prominently in the enactment of the Budget Control Act of 2011( P.L. 112-25 ), which set enforceable limits for both mandatory and discretionary spending. The limits on discretionary spending, which have been amended and adjusted since they were first enacted, have implications for HUD's budget, the largest source of funding for direct housing assistance, because it is made up almost entirely of discretionary appropriations. In FY2020, the discretionary spending limits are slated to decrease, after having been increased in FY2018 and FY2019 by the Bipartisan Budget Act of FY2018 (BBA; P.L. 115-123 ). The nondefense discretionary cap (the one relevant for housing programs and activities) will decline by more than 9% in FY2020, absent any additional legislative changes. More than three-quarters of HUD's appropriations are devoted to three rental assistance programs serving more than 4 million families: the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program, Section 8 project-based rental assistance, and the public housing program. Funding for the HCV program and project-based rental assistance has been increasing in recent years, largely because of the increased costs of maintaining assistance for households that are currently served by the programs. Public housing has, arguably, been underfunded (based on studies undertaken by HUD of what it should cost to operate and maintain it) for many years. Despite the large share of total HUD funding these rental assistance programs command, their combined funding levels only permit them to serve an estimated one in four eligible families, which creates long waiting lists for assistance in most communities. A similar dynamic plays out in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Housing Service budget. Demand for housing assistance exceeds the supply of subsidies, yet the vast majority of the RHS budget is devoted to maintaining assistance for current residents. In a budget environment with limits on discretionary spending, the pressure to provide increased funding to maintain current services for existing rental assistance programs must be balanced against the pressure from states, localities, and advocates to maintain or increase funding for other popular programs, such as HUD's Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, grants for homelessness assistance, and funding for Native American housing. The Trump Administration's budget request for FY2020 proposes an 18% decrease in funding for HUD's programs and activities as compared to the prior year. It proposes to eliminate funding for several programs, including multiple HUD grant programs (CDBG, the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, and the Self-Help and Assisted Homeownership Opportunity Program (SHOP)), and to decrease funding for most other HUD programs. In proposing to eliminate the grant programs, the Administration cites budget constraints and proposes that state and local governments take on more of a role in the housing and community development activities funded by these programs. Additionally, the budget references policy changes designed to reduce the cost of federal rental assistance programs, including the Making Affordable Housing Work Act of 2018 (MAHWA) legislative proposal, released by HUD in April 2018. If enacted, the proposal would make a number of changes to the way tenant rents are calculated in HUD rental assistance programs, resulting in rent increases for assisted housing recipients, and corresponding decreases in the cost of federal subsidies. Further, it would permit local program administrators or property owners to institute work requirements for recipients. In announcing the proposal, HUD described it as setting the programs on "a more fiscally sustainable path," creating administrative efficiency, and promoting self-sufficiency. Low-income housing advocates have been critical of it, particularly the effect increased rent payments may have on families. Beyond HUD, the Administration's FY2020 budget request for USDA's Rural Housing Service would eliminate funding for most rural housing programs, except for several loan guarantee programs. It would continue to provide funding to renew existing rental assistance, but also proposes a new minimum rent policy for tenants designed to help reduce federal subsidy costs. For more on HUD appropriations trends in general, see CRS Report R42542, Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD): Funding Trends Since FY2002 . For more on the FY2020 budget environment, including discretionary spending caps, see CRS Report R44874, The Budget Control Act: Frequently Asked Questions . Several pieces of assisted housing legislation that were enacted in prior Congresses are expected to be implemented during the 116 th Congress. In the FY2016 HUD appropriations law, Congress mandated that HUD expand the Moving to Work (MTW) demonstration by 100 public housing authorities (PHAs). MTW is a waiver program that allows a limited number of participating PHAs to receive exceptions from HUD for most of the rules and regulations governing the public housing and voucher programs. MTW has been controversial for many years, with PHAs supporting the flexibility it provides (e.g., allowing PHAs to move funding between programs), and low-income housing advocates criticizing some of the policies being adopted by PHAs (e.g., work requirements and time limits). Most recently, GAO issued a report raising concerns about HUD's oversight of MTW, including the lack of monitoring of the effects of policy changes under MTW on tenants. HUD was required to phase in the FY2016 expansion and evaluate any new policies adopted by participating PHAs. Following a series of listening sessions and advisory committee meetings, and several solicitations for comment, HUD issued a solicitation of interest for the first two expansion cohorts in December 2018. As of the date of this report, no selections had yet been made for those cohorts. The Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) was an Obama Administration initiative initially designed to test the feasibility of addressing the estimated $25.6 billion backlog in unmet capital needs in the public housing program by allowing local PHAs to convert their public housing properties to either Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers or Section 8 project-based rental assistance. PHAs are limited in their ability to mortgage, and thus raise private capital for, their public housing properties because of a federal deed restriction placed on the properties as a condition of federal assistance. When public housing properties are converted under RAD, that deed restriction is removed. As currently authorized, RAD conversions must be cost-neutral, meaning that the Section 8 rents the converted properties may receive must not result in higher subsidies than would have been received under the public housing program. Given this restriction, and without additional subsidy, not all public housing properties can use a conversion to raise private capital, potentially limiting the usefulness of a conversion for some properties. While RAD conversions have been popular with PHAs, and HUD's initial evaluations of the program have been favorable, a recent GAO study has raised questions about HUD's oversight of RAD, and about how much private funding is actually being raised for public housing through the conversions. RAD, as first authorized by Congress in the FY2012 HUD appropriations law, was originally limited to 60,000 units of public housing (out of roughly 1 million units). However, Congress has since expanded the demonstration. Most recently, in FY2018, Congress raised the cap so that up to 455,000 units of public housing will be permitted to convert to Section 8 under RAD, and it further expanded the program so that Section 202 Housing for the Elderly units can also convert. Not only is HUD currently implementing the FY2018 expansion, but the President's FY2020 budget request to Congress requests that the cap on public housing RAD conversions be eliminated completely. Several major disasters that have recently affected the United States have led to congressional activity related to disaster response and recovery programs. When such incidents occur, the President may authorize an emergency or major disaster declaration under the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (Stafford Act; P.L. 93-288 , as amended), making various housing assistance programs, including programs provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) , available to disaster survivors. FEMA-provided housing assistance may include short-term, emergency sheltering accommodations under Section 403—Essential Assistance—of the Stafford Act (e.g., the Transitional Sheltering Assistance (TSA) program, which is intended to provide short-term hotel/motel accommodations). Interim housing needs may be met through the Individuals and Households Program (IHP) under Section 408—Federal Assistance to Individuals and Households—of the Stafford Act. IHP assistance may include financial (e.g., assistance to rent alternate housing accommodations ) and/or direct assistance (e.g., multi family lease and repair , Transportable Temporary Housing Units , or direct lease ) to eligible individuals and households who, as a result of an emergency or disaster, have uninsured or under-insured necessary expenses and serious needs that cannot be met through other means or forms of assistance. IHP assistance is intended to be temporary and is generally limited to a period of 18 months following the date of the declaration , but it may be extended by FEMA. The Disaster Recovery Reform Act of 2018 (DRRA, Division D of P.L. 115-254 ), which became law on October 5, 2018, is the most comprehensive reform of FEMA's disaster assistance programs since the passage of the Sandy Recovery Improvement Act of 2013 (SRIA, Division B of P.L. 113-2 ) and, prior to that, the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006 (PKEMRA, P.L. 109-295 ). The DRRA legislation focuses on improving pre-disaster planning and mitigation, response, and recovery, and increasing FEMA accountability. As such, it amends many sections of the Stafford Act. In addition to those amendments, DRRA includes new standalone authorities and requires reports to Congress, rulemaking, and other actions. The 116 th Congress has expressed interest in the oversight of DRRA's implementation, including sections that amend FEMA's temporary housing assistance programs under the Stafford Act. These sections include the following: DRRA Section 1211—State Administration of Assistance for Direct Temporary Housing and Permanent Housing Construction—amends Stafford Act Section 408(f)—Federal Assistance to Individuals and Households, State Role—to allow state, territorial, or tribal governments to administer Direct Temporary Housing Assistance and Permanent Housing Construction, in addition to Other Needs Assistance (ONA). It also provides a mechanism for state and local units of government to be reimbursed for locally implemented housing solutions. This provision may allow states to customize disaster housing solutions and expedite disaster recovery; however, FEMA may need to provide guidance to clarify the requirements of the application and approval process for the state, territorial, or tribal government that seeks to administer these programs. DRRA Section 1212—Assistance to Individuals and Households—amends Stafford Act Section 408(h)—Federal Assistance to Individuals and Households, Maximum Amount of Assistance—to separate the cap on the maximum amount of financial assistance eligible individuals and households may receive for housing assistance and ONA. The provision also removes financial assistance to rent alternate housing accommodations from the cap, and creates an exception for accessibility-related costs. This may better enable FEMA's disaster assistance programs to meet the recovery-related needs of individuals, including those with disabilities and others with access and functional needs, and households who experience significant damage to their primary residence and personal property as a result of an emergency or major disaster. However, there is also the potential that this change may disincentivize sufficient insurance coverage because of the new ability for eligible individuals and households to receive separate and increased housing and ONA awards that more comprehensively cover disaster-related real and personal property losses. DRRA Section 1213—Multifamily Lease and Repair Assistance—amends Stafford Act Section 408(c)(1)(B)—Federal Assistance to Individuals and Households, Direct Assistance—to expand the eligible areas for multifamily lease and repair, and remove the requirement that the value of the improvements or repairs not exceed the value of the lease agreement. This may increase housing options for disaster survivors. The Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security must assess the use of FEMA's direct assistance authority to justify this alternative to other temporary housing options, and submit a report to Congress. For more information on DRRA, see CRS Insight IN11055, The Disaster Recovery Reform Act: Homeland Security Issues in the 116th Congress . Additionally, tables of deadlines associated with the implementation actions and requirements of DRRA are available upon request. Native Americans living in tribal areas experience a variety of housing challenges. Housing conditions in tribal areas are generally worse than those for the United States as a whole, and factors such as the legal status of trust lands present additional complications for housing. In light of these challenges, and the federal government's long-standing trust relationship with tribes, certain federal housing programs provide funding specifically for housing in tribal areas. The Tribal HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (Tribal HUD-VASH) program provides rental assistance and supportive services to Native American veterans who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. Tribal HUD-VASH is modeled on the broader HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) program, which provides rental assistance and supportive services for homeless veterans. Tribal HUD-VASH was initially created and funded through the FY2015 HUD appropriations act ( P.L. 113-235 ), and funds to renew rental assistance have been provided in subsequent appropriations acts. However, no separate authorizing legislation for Tribal HUD-VASH currently exists. In the 116 th Congress, a bill to codify the Tribal HUD-VASH program ( S. 257 ) was ordered to be reported favorably by the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in February 2019. A substantively identical bill passed the Senate during the 115 th Congress ( S. 1333 ), but the House ultimately did not consider it. For more information on HUD-VASH and Tribal HUD-VASH, see CRS Report RL34024, Veterans and Homelessness . The main federal program that provides housing assistance to Native American tribes and Alaska Native villages is the Native American Housing Block Grant (NAHBG), which was authorized by the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act of 1996 (NAHASDA,  P.L. 104-330 ). NAHASDA reorganized the federal system of housing assistance for tribes while recognizing the rights of tribal self-governance and self-determination. The NAHBG provides formula funding to tribes that can be used for a range of affordable housing activities that benefit primarily low-income Native Americans or Alaska Natives living in tribal areas. A separate block grant program authorized by NAHASDA, the Native Hawaiian Housing Block Grant (NHHBG), provides funding for affordable housing activities that benefit Native Hawaiians eligible to reside on the Hawaiian Home Lands. NAHASDA also authorizes a loan guarantee program, the Title VI Loan Guarantee, for tribes to carry out eligible affordable housing activities. The most recent authorization for most NAHASDA programs expired at the end of FY2013, although NAHASDA programs have generally continued to be funded in annual appropriations laws. (The NHHBG has not been reauthorized since its original authorization expired in FY2005, though it has continued to receive funding in most years. ) NAHASDA reauthorization legislation has been considered in varying degrees in the 113 th , 114 th , and 115 th Congresses but none was ultimately enacted. The 116 th Congress may again consider legislation to reauthorize NAHASDA. In general, tribes and Congress have been supportive of NAHASDA, though there has been some disagreement over specific provisions or policy proposals that have been included in reauthorization bills. Some of these disagreements involve debates over specific program changes that have been proposed. Others involve debate over broader issues, such as the appropriateness of providing federal funding for programs specifically for Native Hawaiians and whether such funding could be construed to provide benefits based on race. For more information on NAHASDA, see CRS Report R43307, The Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act of 1996 (NAHASDA): Background and Funding . In the past, Congress has regularly extended a number of temporary tax provisions that address a variety of policy issues, including certain provisions related to housing. This set of temporary provisions is commonly referred to as "tax extenders." Two housing-related provisions that have been included in tax extenders packages recently are (1) the exclusion for canceled mortgage debt, and (2) the deduction for mortgage insurance premiums, each of which is discussed further below. The most recently enacted tax extenders legislation was the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 ( P.L. 115-123 ) in the 115 th Congress. That law extended the exclusion for canceled mortgage debt and the ability to deduct mortgage insurance premiums through the end of 2017 (each had previously expired at the end of 2016). As of the date of this report, these provisions had not been extended beyond 2017. In the 116 th Congress, S. 617 , the Tax Extender and Disaster Relief Act of 2019, would extend each of these provisions through calendar year 2019. For more information on tax extenders in general, see CRS Report R45347, Tax Provisions That Expired in 2017 ("Tax Extenders") . Historically, when all or part of a taxpayer's mortgage debt has been forgiven, the forgiven amount has been included in the taxpayer's gross income for tax purposes. This income is typically referred to as canceled mortgage debt income. During the housing market turmoil of the late 2000s, some efforts to help troubled borrowers avoid foreclosure resulted in canceled mortgage debt. The Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007 ( P.L. 110-142 ), signed into law in December 2007, temporarily excluded qualified canceled mortgage debt income associated with a primary residence from taxation. The provision was originally effective for debt discharged before January 1, 2010, and was subsequently extended several times. Rationales put forth when the provision was originally enacted included minimizing hardship for distressed households, lessening the risk that nontax homeownership retention efforts would be thwarted by tax policy, and assisting in the recoveries of the housing market and overall economy. Arguments against the exclusion at the time included concerns that it makes debt forgiveness more attractive for homeowners, which could encourage homeowners to be less responsible about fulfilling debt obligations, and concerns about fairness given that the ability to realize the benefits depends on a variety of factors. More recently, because the economy, housing market, and foreclosure rates have improved significantly since the height of the housing and mortgage market turmoil, the exclusion may no longer be warranted. For more information on the exclusion for canceled mortgage debt, see CRS Report RL34212, Analysis of the Tax Exclusion for Canceled Mortgage Debt Income . Traditionally, homeowners have been able to deduct the interest paid on their mortgage, as well as property taxes they pay, as long as they itemize their tax deductions. Beginning in 2007, homeowners could also deduct qualifying mortgage insurance premiums as a result of the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006 ( P.L. 109-432 ). Specifically, homeowners could effectively treat qualifying mortgage insurance premiums as mortgage interest, thus making the premiums deductible if homeowners itemized and their adjusted gross incomes were below a specified threshold ($55,000 for single, $110,000 for married filing jointly). Originally, the deduction was to be available only for 2007, but it was subsequently extended several times. Two possible rationales for allowing the deduction of mortgage insurance premiums are that it assisted in the recovery of the housing market, and that it promotes homeownership. The housing market, however, has largely recovered from the market turmoil of the late 2000s, and it is not clear that the deduction has an effect on the homeownership rate. Furthermore, to the degree that owner-occupied housing is over subsidized, extending the deduction could lead to a greater misallocation of the resources that are directed toward the housing industry. In the past, Congress has regularly extended a number of temporary tax provisions that address a variety of policy issues, including certain provisions related to housing. This set of temporary provisions is commonly referred to as "tax extenders." Two housing-related provisions that have been included in tax extenders packages recently are (1) the exclusion for canceled mortgage debt, and (2) the deduction for mortgage insurance premiums, each of which is discussed further below. The most recently enacted tax extenders legislation was the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 ( P.L. 115-123 ) in the 115 th Congress. That law extended the exclusion for canceled mortgage debt and the ability to deduct mortgage insurance premiums through the end of 2017 (each had previously expired at the end of 2016). As of the date of this report, these provisions had not been extended beyond 2017. In the 116 th Congress, S. 617 , the Tax Extender and Disaster Relief Act of 2019, would extend each of these provisions through calendar year 2019. For more information on tax extenders in general, see CRS Report R45347, Tax Provisions That Expired in 2017 ("Tax Extenders") . Historically, when all or part of a taxpayer's mortgage debt has been forgiven, the forgiven amount has been included in the taxpayer's gross income for tax purposes. This income is typically referred to as canceled mortgage debt income. During the housing market turmoil of the late 2000s, some efforts to help troubled borrowers avoid foreclosure resulted in canceled mortgage debt. The Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007 ( P.L. 110-142 ), signed into law in December 2007, temporarily excluded qualified canceled mortgage debt income associated with a primary residence from taxation. The provision was originally effective for debt discharged before January 1, 2010, and was subsequently extended several times. Rationales put forth when the provision was originally enacted included minimizing hardship for distressed households, lessening the risk that nontax homeownership retention efforts would be thwarted by tax policy, and assisting in the recoveries of the housing market and overall economy. Arguments against the exclusion at the time included concerns that it makes debt forgiveness more attractive for homeowners, which could encourage homeowners to be less responsible about fulfilling debt obligations, and concerns about fairness given that the ability to realize the benefits depends on a variety of factors. More recently, because the economy, housing market, and foreclosure rates have improved significantly since the height of the housing and mortgage market turmoil, the exclusion may no longer be warranted. For more information on the exclusion for canceled mortgage debt, see CRS Report RL34212, Analysis of the Tax Exclusion for Canceled Mortgage Debt Income . Traditionally, homeowners have been able to deduct the interest paid on their mortgage, as well as property taxes they pay, as long as they itemize their tax deductions. Beginning in 2007, homeowners could also deduct qualifying mortgage insurance premiums as a result of the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006 ( P.L. 109-432 ). Specifically, homeowners could effectively treat qualifying mortgage insurance premiums as mortgage interest, thus making the premiums deductible if homeowners itemized and their adjusted gross incomes were below a specified threshold ($55,000 for single, $110,000 for married filing jointly). Originally, the deduction was to be available only for 2007, but it was subsequently extended several times. Two possible rationales for allowing the deduction of mortgage insurance premiums are that it assisted in the recovery of the housing market, and that it promotes homeownership. The housing market, however, has largely recovered from the market turmoil of the late 2000s, and it is not clear that the deduction has an effect on the homeownership rate. Furthermore, to the degree that owner-occupied housing is over subsidized, extending the deduction could lead to a greater misallocation of the resources that are directed toward the housing industry. 

 

 Report 2:
The U.S. corporate income tax is based on worldwide economic activity. If all of a corporation's economic activity is in the United States, then tax administration and compliance is relatively straightforward. Many corporations, however, operate in several jurisdictions, which creates complications for tax administration and compliance. Further, corporations may actively choose where and how to organize to reduce their U.S. and worldwide tax liabilities. Some of these strategies have been referred to as expatriation, inversions, and mergers. This report begins with a brief discussion of relevant portions of the U.S. corporate income tax system before examining how inversions were commonly structured. The report then looks at how Congress and the Department of the Treasury have reduced the benefits of inversions. The report concludes with an examination of remaining methods for inverting and policy options available to prevent or limit these inversions. Achieving tax savings using an inversion became more difficult with the enactment of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 (JOBS Act; P.L. 108-357 ). The JOBS Act denied or restricted the tax benefits of an inversion if the owners of the new company were not substantially different from the owners of the original company. The act also allowed a firm to invert only if it had substantial business operations in the country where the new headquarters was to be located. Although the 2004 legislation largely prevented the types of inversions that drew attention prior to its adoption, several companies have successfully inverted in the past few years by using the substantive business operations mechanism or merging. Treasury regulations have subsequently limited the former mechanism. In spring 2014, several high-profile companies indicated an interest in merging or plans to merge with a non-U.S. firm, including Pfizer, Chiquita, and Omnicom (an advertising firm). News reports indicated that a group of Walgreens investors was also urging such a move. Although the Pfizer and Omnicon mergers and Walgreens headquarters shifts ultimately did not take place, other firms announced mergers in the late spring and early summer. A number of firms in the medical device or pharmaceuticals fields announced mergers or proposed mergers with a shift of headquarters: Medtronics, Salix, AbbVie, Mylan, and Hospira. In August 2014, concern about inversions increased with the announcement that Burger King was in talks to merge with Tim Hortons, a Canadian firm, with the merged firm's headquarters in Canada. An agreement was announced on August 26. Although Burger King is a smaller firm than AbbVie, for example, it is a household name and this proposed inversion garnered much attention. In September 2014, the Treasury Department released a notice of regulatory changes that would restrict some aspects of inversions or their benefits and indicated that other actions may follow. AbbVie, Chiquita, and some other firms canceled their plans in the wake of these Treasury regulations, although new merger proposals were also announced. In November 2015, the Treasury announced additional regulatory restrictions. Although new inversions slowed significantly, others continued but in many cases have been structured to avoid the regulations by reducing ownership below 60%. Most notable of these is the proposed merger of Pfizer with Allergan in November 2015. Pfizer terminated the merger after the release of the April 4, 2016, regulations. This "second wave" of inversions again raised concerns about an erosion of the U.S. tax base. While the substantial business avenue appears to have been largely eliminated by Treasury regulations that increased the required share of activity, the option of merging with a smaller foreign company remains. U.S. firms may also merge with larger firms, although in this case the tax benefits are less likely to be key factors in the decision to merge. Data released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis indicated that acquisitions by foreigners, which rose substantially in 2015, fell by 15% in 2016, and by 32% in 2017. Some of the largest declines were in countries associated with inversions, such as Ireland, where acquisitions fell from $176 billion in 2015, to $35 billion in 2016, and to $7 billion in 2017. In December 2017, a tax revision ( P.L. 115-97 ), often called the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), and subsequently referred to as the "Act," made major changes to the corporate tax and the international tax rules, along with some specific revisions aimed at discouraging inversions. Although data for 2018 are not yet available, one planned inversion, by Assurant, Inc., was revised to retain the headquarters in the United States. Ohio-based Dana, Inc. announced plans to merge and move the headquarters to the U.K., although the merger would leave the U.S. shareholders with less than 60% ownership, and therefore not make them subject to anti-inversion penalties. The United States uses a system that taxes both the worldwide income of U.S. corporations and the income of foreign firms earned within U.S. borders. All income earned within U.S. borders is taxed the same—in the year earned and at statutory tax rates of 21% (reduced from 35% by the Act). Under pre-Act law, U.S. corporate income earned outside the United States was also subject to U.S. taxation, though not necessarily in the year earned. This treatment occurred because U.S. corporations could defer U.S. tax on active income earned abroad in foreign subsidiaries until it was paid, or repatriated, to the U.S. parent company as a dividend. To mitigate double taxation, tax due on repatriated income was reduced by the amount of foreign taxes already paid. The Act substituted a new system (Global Intangible Low-Taxed Income, or GILTI) that taxed foreign source income of U.S. subsidiaries currently but with an exemption for a deemed return of 10% on tangible assets and a deduction from the remaining income (for 50% of income through 2025 and 37.5% afterward). It allows a credit for 80% of foreign taxes. The new system also allows U.S. firms a deduction for foreign derived intangible income, or FDII, which was designed to reduce tax rates on foreign earnings from the use of intangible assets held in the United States. The deduction is 37.5% of this estimated income through 2025 and 21.875% afterward. Income from certain foreign sources earned by subsidiaries—which generally includes passive types of income, such as interest, dividends, annuities, rents, and royalties, and is referred to as Subpart F income—is generally taxed in the year it is earned and was retained by the Act. Subpart F applies only to shareholders who may be able to influence location decisions at the corporate level. These subsidiaries are referred to as controlled foreign corporations (CFCs). The Act also adopted the Base Erosion and Anti-Abuse tax (BEAT), an alternative minimum tax with the tax based increased by certain payments to related foreign parties. Its primary focus was to address profit shifting between foreign parents and U.S. subsidiaries, but it applies in general. Notably, it excludes payments for costs of goods sold and for costs of services under some pricing rules. One way of shifting profits was to locate debt in high-tax countries. Preexisting thin capitalization rules limited interest to 50% of earnings before the deduction of interest, taxes, and amortization, deprec iation, and depletion (EBITA), although firms with a debt-to-asset rate of 1.5 or less were exempt. The new law adopted much stricter thin capitalization rules to prevent firms from deducting large amounts of interest. The new law lowers the cap to 30% of profits, eliminates the exemption based on the debt-to-asset ratio and, after 2021, measures the cap as a share of profits after amortization, depreciation, and depletion deductions. The Act also adopted some tax provisions targeted at discouraging inversions, which are discussed subsequently. A corporate inversion is a process by which an existing U.S. corporation changes its country of residence. After the inversion, the original U.S. corporation becomes a subsidiary of a foreign parent corporation. Corporate inversions occur through three different paths: the substantial activity test, merger with a larger foreign firm, and merger with a smaller foreign firm. Regardless of the form of the inversion, the typical result is that the new foreign parent company faces a lower home country tax rate and no tax on the company's foreign-source income. The U.S. firm can use inversions to reduce taxes using various techniques. Foreign operations in the future can be formed as subsidiaries of the new foreign parent in a country with a territorial tax, so that future foreign income can be exempt from tax. Accumulated and future foreign income from the U.S. company's foreign subsidiaries (which would be taxed by the United States if paid to the parent as a dividend) may be effectively repatriated tax free by lending or otherwise investing in the related foreign firm, such as a low-interest loan to the foreign parent holding company. These borrowed funds could then be used, for example, to pay dividends to shareholders or make loans to the U.S. firm. In addition, the combined firm can engage in "earnings stripping": reducing income in the U.S. firm by borrowing from the U.S. company and increasing interest deductions. For example, a foreign parent may lend to its U.S. subsidiary. This intercompany debt does not alter the overall company's debt, but does result in an interest expense in the United States (which reduces U.S. taxes paid) and an increased portion of company income being "booked" outside the United States. Royalty payments, management fees, and transfer pricing arrangements are other avenues for earnings stripping, but are thought to be of lesser importance than intercompany debt. In this form of inversion, a U.S. corporation with substantial business activity in a foreign company creates a foreign subsidiary. The U.S. corporation and foreign subsidiary exchange stock—resulting in each entity owning some of the other's stock. After the stock exchange, the new entity is a foreign corporation with a U.S. subsidiary, as the exchange is generally in proportion to the respective company valuations. As this form of inversion does not require any change in the effective control of the corporation, it is referred to as a "naked inversion." In this form of inversion, a U.S. corporation would like to bolster its foreign operations and, perhaps, lower its U.S. tax. To do so, the U.S. corporation merges with a larger foreign corporation, with the U.S. shareholders owning a minority share of the new merged company. This results in the effective control of the new company being outside U.S. borders. While this form of inversion may be driven by business considerations, tax considerations may also be part of the decision. An example of this can be seen in the following statement by the board of directors of a U.S. corporation recommending approval of a merger with a U.K. corporation. The board of directors pursued the merger in part because Ensco was headquartered in a jurisdiction that has a favorable tax regime and an extensive network of tax treaties, which can allow the combined company to achieve a global effective tax rate comparable to Pride's competitors. In this case, a U.S. firm, Pride, merged with a U.K. firm, Ensco, and the headquarters remained in the U.K. In this form of inversion, a U.S. corporation would like to bolster its foreign operations and lower its U.S. tax. To do so, the U.S. corporation merges with a smaller foreign corporation, with the U.S. shareholders owning a majority share of the new merged company. This merger results in the effective control of the new company staying with the shareholders of the U.S. corporations. While this form of inversion may be driven by business considerations, tax considerations may also be part of the decision. An example is the Eaton Cooper merger. The following is an excerpt of a U.S. corporation's (Eaton's) press release announcing the acquisition of an Irish company (Cooper), with the company headquartering in Ireland (with a 12.5% tax rate and a territorial system). At the close of the transaction ... Eaton and Cooper will be combined under a new company incorporated in Ireland, where Cooper is incorporated today. The newly created company, which is expected to be called Eaton Global Corporation Plc or a variant thereof ("New Eaton"), will be led by Alexander M. Cutler, Eaton's current chairman and chief executive officer. At the close of the merger, it was expected that the shareholders of the U.S. company would control 73% of the combined company, with the shareholders of the Irish company controlling the remaining 27%. The press release notes expected tax benefits from the merger at $165 million in 2016, out of $535 million of total cost savings. In this case, a U.S. corporation used a merger to achieve an inversion while its shareholders retained a significant majority of shares. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, news reports drew the attention of policymakers and the public to a phenomenon sometimes called corporate "inversions" or "expatriations": instances where firms that consist of multiple corporations reorganize their structure so that the "parent" element of the group is a foreign corporation rather than a corporation chartered in the United States. Among the more high-profile inversions were Ingersoll-Rand, Tyco, the PXRE Group, Foster Wheeler, Nabors Industries, and Coopers Industries. These corporate inversions apparently involved few, if any, shifts in actual economic activity from the United States abroad, at least in the near term. In particular, inverted firms typically continued to maintain headquarters in the United States and did not systematically shift capital or employment abroad post inversion. Further, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands were the location of many of the newly created parent corporations—jurisdictions that have no corporate income tax but that also do have highly developed legal, institutional, and communications infrastructures. A 2002 study by the U.S. Treasury Department concluded that while inversions were not new—the statutory framework making them possible has long been in existence—there had been a "marked increase" in their frequency, size, and visibility. Taken together, these facts suggested that tax savings were one goal of the inversion, if not the primary goal. Beyond taxes, firms engaged in the inversions cited a number of reasons for undertaking them, including creating greater "operational flexibility," improved cash management, and an enhanced ability to access international capital markets. The 2002 Treasury report identified three main concerns about corporate inversions: erosion of the U.S. tax base, a cost advantage for foreign-controlled firms, and a reduction in perceived fairness of the tax system. These concerns, along with a growing awareness of inversion transactions, may have resulted in congressional concern and debate about how to address the issues surrounding inversions, culminating with the enactment of an anti-inversion provision (Section 7874) in the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 (AJCA; P.L. 108-357 ). The AJCA adopted two alternative tax regimes applicable to inversions occurring after March 4, 2003. The AJCA treats the inverted foreign parent company as a domestic corporation if it is owned by at least 80% of the former parent's stockholders. In these cases, the AJCA would deny the firm any tax benefits of the inversion (i.e., it would continue to be taxed on the combined group's worldwide income). The second regime applies when there is at least 60% continuity of ownership but less than 80%. In this case, the new foreign parent is not taxed like a domestic corporation, but any U.S. toll taxes (taxes on gains) that apply to transfers of assets to the new entity are not permitted to be offset by foreign tax credits or net operating losses. The AJCA also exempted corporations with substantial economic activity in the foreign country from the anti-inversion provisions, but it did not define substantial business activity in the statute. Although the 2004 act largely eliminated the generic naked inversions, two alternatives remained that allowed a firm to shift headquarters and retain control of the business: the naked inversion via the business activity exemption, and merger with a smaller company. Using the business activity route would require significant economic operations in the target country. An inversion by merger would require a large firm that would be at least 25% of the size of the U.S. firm. The post-2004 approaches to inversions no longer involved countries such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, but larger countries with substantial economic activity such as the U.K., Canada, and Ireland. The U.K., in particular, has become a much more attractive headquarters. Because of freedom of movement rules in the European Union, the U.K. cannot have anti-inversion laws, which may have played a role in both moving to a territorial tax and lowering the corporate tax rate. A 2012 report in the Wall Street Journal highlighted some recent moves abroad. This report claimed 10 companies had inverted since 2009, with 6 within the past year or so. This was a small number of companies, but it is useful to look at the methods involved. The Wall Street Journal article identified by name 5 of the 10 companies that had moved abroad recently: Aon, ENSCO, Rowan, Eaton, and DE Master Blenders 1763. (The article also referred to Transocean and Weatherford International, but these were firms that had inverted before the 2004 legislation: Transocean first to the Cayman Islands, and then Switzerland, and Weatherford first to Bermuda, and then Switzerland.) The remaining firm mentioned in the Wall Street Journal article is Eaton. Eaton's move abroad was a merger; it merged with Coopers, a firm effectively operating its headquarters in the United States, but one that had inverted prior to the 2004 law change. An article by Bret Wells identified Aon, ENSCO, and Rowan as having inverted via the substantial business activity exemption (where the only apparent objective is tax savings). All three moved to the United Kingdom, where a recent move to a territorial tax, as well as decisions in the European Court of Justice that limited their anti-abuse rules, had made their tax system more attractive. The U.K. was also in the process of lowering its own corporate rate. Two of the firms are oil drilling firms; drilling in the North Sea might have affected their ability to use this exemption. Aon is an insurance firm. Wells mentions another firm, Tim Hortons, which also used a naked inversion using the substantial business activity exemption in 2009 to relocate to Canada. In doing so, the firm was returning to its origins, as it was founded in Canada. It became an American company when Wendy's acquired it in 1995, but it was subsequently spun off in 2006. DE Master Blenders 1763, like Tim Hortons, was returning to its origins as well (a Netherlands firm), as it was spun off from Sara Lee, which had acquired it in 1978. In response to increased use of the substantial business activity exemption, Treasury Regulations (T.D. 9592, June 12, 2012) increased the safe harbor for the substantial business activities test from 10% to 25%, effectively closing off this avenue in the future. This action could be done by regulation because the statute did not specify how the substantial business activity test was to be implemented. A number of mergers have either been effectuated or were proposed: Chiquita, Actavis, and Perrigo (the latter two are pharmaceutical firms) moving to Ireland; Valeant Pharmaceuticals and Endo Health Services moving to Canada; and Liberty Global (a cable company) to the U.K. Subsequently, the new Irish firm Actavis (itself the result of two prior mergers) merged with Forest Labs. Omnicom (an advertising firm) planned a move to the U.K. (after proposed merger with a French firm, creating a Netherlands holding company, resident in the U.K. for tax purposes), but has abandoned its merger. Chiquita canceled its plans after Treasury regulations were issued in September 2014. Most of these firms are not household names or industry giants. Thus, perhaps none created as much interest as the attempt by pharmacy giant Pfizer to acquire AstraZeneca with a U.K. headquarters, or the urging of some stockholders of Walgreens to invert to Switzerland. Pfizer represented a significant potential loss of future tax revenue, as much as $1.4 billion per year. According to a study by Martin Sullivan, in 2005, when a temporary tax exclusion of 85% of dividends (the repatriation holiday) was in force, Pfizer repatriated $37 billion, the single largest amount of repatriations of any firm. In 2009, Pfizer repatriated $34 billion (and paid U.S. taxes on that amount) to finance the acquisition of Wyeth, but earnings abroad grew from $42 billion in 2009 (after the repatriation) to $73 billion by 2012. These earnings have not been repatriated and taxed in the United States. An inversion by Pfizer would, however, result in current shareholders paying capital gains taxes on any stock appreciation when they are converted into shares of the new company. Shares held in IRAs and 401(k)s would not typically owe this tax, but shares owned directly by individuals and in mutual funds would owe tax even if they did not sell their stock. Policymakers and the public remained interested in the issue of inversions through 2014. Although the initial Pfizer merger did not occur, the spate of mergers or proposed mergers in the medical device and pharmaceuticals industries continued in 2014. One example included one of the largest proposed mergers yet, AbbVie's acquisition of Shire, an Irish firm. The announcement of a proposed merger between Burger King and Tim Hortons also generated interest in the issue. As is the case with Chiquita, AbbVie canceled its plans after the issuance of Treasury regulations in September 2014, but Burger King planned to complete its merger and did so on December 12, 2014. Treasury continues to regulate inversions where regulations are possible. For example, in 2014 it took action to close a loophole stemming from the coordination of two sets of regulations—the "Anti-Killer B Regulations" and the "Helen of Troy Anti-Inversion Regulations"—that allowed Liberty Global shareholders to avoid some capital gains taxes. In response to the new wave of inversions, the Treasury Department released a notice of regulatory actions that would restrict inversions and their benefits. Treasury news releases, however, indicated that legislative action is the only way to fully rein in these transactions. Following this notice, several firms announced they were canceling plans to merge, and one firm, Medtronic, announced a change in financing plans (no longer using earnings abroad to pay acquisition costs). Other firms, however, have announced inversion plans. There is no way to know how many unannounced mergers were, or will be, prevented by these regulations. The regulatory actions address two basic aspects of inversions. One set of changes limits the ability to access the accumulated deferred earnings of foreign subsidiaries of U.S. firms. The second regulatory action restricts certain techniques used in inversion transactions that allowed firms to qualify with less than 80% ownership. This regulation is effective for inversions that closed on or after September 22, 2014. The regulations do not prevent inversions via merger and do not address earnings stripping by shifting debt to the U.S. firm, although Treasury has indicated future action in this area. In an inversion, the foreign subsidiaries of the original U.S. firm remain subsidiaries so that any dividends paid to the U.S. parent would be taxed. Regulations also treat other direct investments in U.S. property, such as loans to the U.S. parent, as dividends. Once a firm has inverted and the U.S. firm is now a subsidiary of a foreign parent, there are methods of accessing the earnings of overseas subsidiaries by transactions between the new foreign parent and the U.S. firm's foreign subsidiaries. The regulation is intended to address three such methods. First, the regulation prevents the access to funds by, for example, a loan from the U.S. company's foreign subsidiary to the new foreign parent (called "hopscotching"). Before the regulation, funds of this type could have been used to pay dividends to the individual shareholders or for other purposes. Under the regulation, acquiring any obligation (such as a loan) or stock of a foreign related person is treated as U.S. property subject to tax. Second, the regulation addresses "decontrolling," where the foreign acquiring corporation issues a note or transfer of property for stock in the U.S. firm's foreign subsidiaries. If a majority of stock is obtained, the U.S. firm's subsidiary is no longer a controlled foreign corporation (CFC) and not subject to Subpart F, which taxes currently certain passive or easily shifted income. However, even a less than majority share can allow partial access to deferred earnings without a U.S. tax. This regulation prevents this by treating acquisition of foreign subsidiary stock as acquisition of stock in the U.S. parent. Third, the regulation addresses transactions where the foreign acquiring corporation sells stock of the former U.S. parent corporation to that U.S. parent corporation's CFC in exchange for property or cash. If such a transaction is structured properly, some interpretations of the old regulations would have permitted the income to avoid taxation. The new regulations would prevent that and would apply regardless of the firm's inversion status. A firm can realize the tax benefits of an inversion only if the shareholders of the original U.S. firm retain, after the merger, less than 80% of the ownership in the new company. The regulation contains several provisions that limit certain techniques for achieving this goal. The avoidance techniques include inflating the foreign firm, shrinking the U.S. firm, and inverting only part of the U.S. firm. First, it prevents firms from reaching the less than 80% goal by inflating the size of the foreign merger partner (which must have more than 20% ownership subsequent to the merger) by use of passive assets (e.g., an interest bearing bank deposit). This notice disregards passive assets of the foreign firm if more than 50% of its value is in passive assets. (Banks and financial service companies are excluded.) Second, it prevents firms from shrinking the size of the U.S. firm by paying extraordinary dividends before the merger. The notice disregards this reduction in value. Third, it prevents an inversion of part of a U.S. company (a "spinversion") by spinning it off to a newly formed foreign corporation, by treating the new "foreign" company as a domestic corporation. After the 2014 Treasury regulations were issued, some firms revised their plans, and the pace of inversions slowed. Some mergers were structured to avoid the anti-inversion rules and Treasury regulations, by an ownership share of less than 60%. Among what appear to be inversions is the merger of telecom firm Arris and Pace (a U.K. firm), CF Industries (fertilizer) and OCI NB (a Netherlands firm), Terex with Konecranes (a Finnish firm), and a consolidation of European Coca-Cola bottling firms (one such firm, Coca-Cola Enterprises, was a U.S. headquartered firm). Waste Connections Inc. merged with Progressive Waste Solutions Ltd (a Canadian Firm), with 70% ownership and a headquarters in Canada. Monsanto's proposal to merge with Syngenta (a Swiss firm) was called off. Some mergers that did not qualify as inversions under the tax law also occurred. The most significant in size was the proposed Pfizer merger. On November 23, 2015, Pfizer announced a proposed merger with Allergan, an Irish company, and the move of its headquarters to Ireland. This merger, which would result in the largest pharmaceutical company in the world, is not covered under the anti-inversion rules because Pfizer will own 56% of the value of the new firm. Allergan itself is the product of a merger involving both stock and cash acquisition by Actavis in 2015, with former Allergen shareholders owning a minority of the new company. Thus, this merger as well was not an inversion under the tax law. Actavis, in turn, was a former U.S. firm that inverted by merger with Warner Chillcott, an Irish firm, in 2013 (where the former shareholders of the U.S. firm acquired 77% of the stock). Pfizer terminated its merger with Allergen after the April 4, 2016, regulations (discussed below). Other notable mergers not subject to anti-inversion rules were the acquisition of Salix, a pharmaceutical company, by Valeant (a Canadian company); the acquisition of Auxilium by Endo (after Auxilium backed out of an inversion with Canadian firm QLT); the merger of Cyberonics with Italy's Sorin (to be headquartered in the U.K.); and the merger of Broadcom (a chipmaker) with Avago (a Singapore firm). Information and analytics provider HIS announced a merger with Markit Ltd, a U.K. firm, to be headquartered in the U.K., but the ownership share of HIS would be less than 60% of the firm. Johnson Controls also merged with Tyco, one of the earlier inverted firms. The 2015 Treasury regulations appear to have more limited consequences for inversions than the 2014 regulations did. Three regulatory changes were made by the notice. First, in the case where the foreign parent is a tax resident of a third country, stock issued by that parent to the existing foreign firm will be disregarded for purposes of the ownership requirement. That change will prevent a U.S. firm from merging with a partner and then choosing a tax friendly third country to headquarter in. The second provision would clarify the so called "anti-stuffing" rules, where the foreign firm's size is inflated by adding assets to that firm. The notice clarifies that this rule applies to any assets, not just passive assets. Third, the current business activity exception requires 25% of business activity to be in the foreign country where the new parent is created or organized, but does not require it to be a foreign parent. This rule requires the business activity to be in the foreign parent. It prevents inversion based on the business activity test when the foreign parent has a tax residence in another country without substantial business activities. On April 4, 2016, the Treasury Department issued temporary and proposed regulations formalizing rules contained in Notices 2014-52 and 2015-79 limiting corporate tax inversions, as well as adding new rules addressing inversions and earnings-stripping transactions. In response to these new regulations, the proposed merger between Pfizer and Allergen PLC has been terminated. The April 4, 2016, Treasury regulations put in place several anti-inversion rules that target groups that have engaged in a series of inversion or acquisition transactions as well as a rule that restricts postinversion asset dilution. The temporary regulations target inversion transactions involving a new foreign parent that previously acquired one or more U.S. entities in inversions or acquisitions in which the new foreign parent issued stock. These prior acquisitions would generally increase the value of the foreign entity, enabling it to subsequently engage in an inversion transaction with a larger U.S. company while remaining below the 60% or 80% ownership thresholds. The temporary regulations disregard stock of the new foreign parent to the extent the value of such stock is attributable to its prior U.S. entity acquisitions during the prior three years. According to analysis by Americans for Tax Fairness, the implementation of this rule would have increased Pfizer's share of the merged company to roughly 70% from 56% prior to the rule. Similar to the multiple domestic entity acquisition rule, the multiple-step acquisition rule targets certain inversions that are structured as back-to-back foreign acquisitions. Specifically, it targets transactions that are part of a plan in which a foreign corporation acquires substantially all of the assets of a U.S. entity and, subsequent to this first acquisition, a second foreign corporation acquires substantially all of the assets of the first foreign corporation. The temporary regulations, under certain circumstances, treat each acquisition as an acquisition of a U.S. entity that may be subject to anti-inversion rules. Unlike the multiple domestic entity acquisition rule, which has a three-year look-back period, the multiple-step acquisition rule can be applied to all acquisitions that are part of the same plan regardless of time. A third rule modified existing regulations to restrict the ability of inverted companies to avoid paying tax on unrealized gains (under Section 965) through a transfer to a controlled foreign corporation (CFC) (under Section 351). This would address situations where a CFC of an inverted U.S. company engages in a postinversion exchange that could dilute a U.S. shareholder's indirect interest in the exchanged asset, allowing the U.S. shareholder to avoid U.S. tax on any realized gain in the asset that is not recognized at the time of the transfer. The rule requires a CFC of an inverted U.S. group to recognize all realized gain with respect to any such postinversion Section 351 exchange. The earnings-stripping regulations aim to restrict the ability of foreign-parent groups to shift earnings out of the United States through dividends or other economically similar transactions (under Section 385). In these cases certain related-party debt will be characterized as equity for tax purposes. The result of equity classification is that interest deductions will be disallowed, and withholding obligations of 30% (or lower rate based on an applicable income tax treaty) could ensue. The regulations do not normally apply for related-party debt that is incurred to fund actual business investment, such as building or equipping a factory. The regulations also require documentation of debt instruments issued and held by certain members of an expanded group to establish that such instruments are properly characterized as debt. The regulations also allow the IRS on audit to treat an instrument issued to a related party as in part debt and in part equity. The final regulations issued on October 21, 2016, scaled back the original regulations in response to the comment period. The final regulations removed the general bifurcation rule that would have allowed a debt instrument to be classified as part debt and part equity and an exemption for debt for foreign issuers. The rules also provided exemptions for cash pools (a pool of cash to be accessed for short-term needs), short-term loans, regulated financial entities, and pass-throughs (firms not taxed as corporations). The Treasury delayed documentation rules for a year on July 28, 2017. Treasury announced on July 7, 2017, that these debt-equity regulations were to be among eight rules targeted for review. The Treasury issued final regulations for the temporary regulations introduced in April 2016 on July 12, 2018, as TD 9834 with minor changes. Two days after the regulations were issued, Pfizer withdrew from its merger with Allergen, an Irish-based company that was an inverted firm. It appears that this merger was affected by the multiple-entity rule, which has come to be called "serial inversion." Mergers between Shire (Ireland based) and Basalta, and between HIS and Markit Group Inc. (U.K. based) went forward. The CF Industries merger with OCI NV (based in the Netherlands) was also called off; Johnson Controls and Tyco went forward. A merger between Konecranes (a Finnish firm) and Terex was scaled down to an acquisition of a share of Terex with the U.S. firm owning 25%, thus avoiding the effect of regulations. In May 2016 Cardtronics, Inc., an ATM operator, announced a plan to move to the U.K. using the substantial business activities test. Also in May, an oil and gas industry service and technology firm announced a merger with Technip SA (France) to form a U.K. company, with each firm holding about half the stock and thus avoiding any of the recent regulations and establishing a new headquarters in another country. In 2017, Praxaire (a U.S. industrial gas company) announced a merger with Linde AG (a German gas and technology company), also with each owning half of the new company. As noted in the introduction, statistical data suggest a decline in inversions from 2015 to 2016, and again from 2016 to 2017, and these data are consistent with the limited news reports of major inversions. Pfizer's CEO has recently indicated that deals are on hold generally while tax reform is being considered. The 2017 legislation not only made fundamental changes to the overall treatment of corporate income at home and abroad, but also adopted several provisions specifically aimed at inverted corporations (those with 60% to 80% ownership). Under the new law, existing untaxed earnings held abroad are taxed under a deemed repatriation rule, but at a lower rate (8% for earnings reinvested in noncash assets and 15.5% for earnings held as cash or cash equivalents). A special recapture rule applies on deemed repatriations of newly inverted firms. This recapture rule applies if a firm first becomes an expatriated entity at any time during the 10-year period beginning on December 22, 2017. In this case, the tax will be increased from 8% and 15.5% to 35% tax for the entire deemed repatriation, with no foreign tax credit allowed for the increase in tax rate. The additional tax is due on the full amount of the deemed repatriation in the first tax year in which the taxpayer becomes an expatriated entity. BEAT excludes payments which reduce gross receipts with the result that payment for the cost of goods sold is not included under BEAT. An exception applies for firms that invert after November 9, 2017, where payments to a foreign parent or any foreign firm in the affiliated for cost of goods sold is included in BEAT. The constructive ownership rules for purposes of determining 10% U.S. shareholders, whether a corporation is a CFC and whether parties satisfy certain relatedness tests, were expanded in the 2017 tax revision. Specifically, the new law treats stock owned by a foreign person as attributable to a U.S. entity owned by the foreign person (so-called "downward attribution"). As a result, stock owned by a foreign person may generally be attributed to (1) a U.S. corporation, 10% of the value of the stock of which is owned, directly or indirectly, by the foreign person; (2) a U.S. partnership in which the foreign person is a partner; and (3) certain U.S. trusts if the foreign person is a beneficiary or, in certain circumstances, a grantor or a substantial owner. The downward attribution rule was originally conceived to deal with inversions. In an inversion, without downward attribution, a subsidiary of the original U.S. parent could lose CFC status if it sold enough stock to the new foreign parent so the U.S. parent no longer had majority ownership. With downward attribution, the ownership of stock by the new foreign parent in the CFC is attributed to the U.S. parent, so that the subsidiary continues its CFC status, making it subject to any tax rules that apply to CFCs (such as Subpart F and repatriation taxes under the old law, and Subpart F and GILTI under the new law). Dividends (like capital gains) are allowed lower tax rates than the rates applied to ordinary income. The rates are 0%, 15%, and 20% depending on the rate bracket that ordinary income falls into. Certain dividends received from foreign firms (those that do not have tax treaties and PFICs ) are not eligible for these lower rates. Dividends paid by firms that inverted after the date of enactment of P.L. 115-97 are added to the list of those not eligible for the lower rates. In 2004, an excise tax of 15% was imposed on stock compensation received by insiders in an expatriated corporation; the new law increases it to 20%, effective on the date of enactment for corporations that first become expatriated after that date. As noted earlier, there are no aggregate data available yet for 2018, but there are also indications that most tax-motivated inversions had already been discouraged by the 2016 regulations. Considering announcements of individual companies, one planned inversion, by Assurant, Inc. was revised to retain the headquarters in the United States. Ohio-based Dana, Inc. announced plans to merge and move the headquarters to the U.K., although the merger would leave the U.S. shareholders with less than 60% ownership, and therefore not make them subject to anti-inversion penalties. A recent announcement indicated that the Dana merger was called off. Some firms may be considering reversing their headquarters decisions. The AJCA was successful at limiting a form of inversions, at least initially. In particular, the AJCA stopped the practice of basic "naked inversions," in which little activity or presence in the new jurisdiction is required and the new parent is domiciled in a tax haven. Further, through regulation, Treasury has limited the use of the substantial business activity test safe harbor to invert. Recent activity (as noted above), however, suggests that mergers continued to be used as a vehicle for corporate inversions after these changes. These more recent mergers have increasingly resulted in a U.K. parent company (e.g., FMC-Technip, HIS-Markit), due to policy decisions by the U.K. government. Specifically, the U.K. lowered its corporate tax rate and adopted a territorial tax system. In addition, anti-abuse provisions for foreign source income were weakened by the European Union courts. The U.K. has also proposed taxing certain intangible income at a 10% rate. (This is referred to as a patent box.) To restrict the occurrence of tax-motivated inversions, both a general reform of the U.S. corporate tax and specific provisions to deal with tax-motivated international mergers were discussed. Some important changes were made in 2017; other options remain. Interest in reforming the corporate income tax was long-standing, including calling for explicit accommodation of international concerns. As noted earlier, two aspects of the U.S. corporate tax system are particularly relevant to corporate location decisions: the corporate tax rate and the taxation of foreign-source earnings. Taken together, these factors, under prior law, could yield a substantial reduction in taxes paid. In the case of the proposed merger of Forest Laboratories Inc. (a U.S. company) and Actavis (an Irish company) in 2014, the tax reduction was estimated to be roughly $100 million per year. Prior to the 2017 changes, the U.S. corporate statutory tax rate was higher than both the average statutory rates of the other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries and that of the 15 largest economies in the world. Many asserted that the U.S. statutory tax rate needed to be lowered to reduce the incentive for inversion transactions. With the rate lowered from 35% to 21%, the combined central and subnational corporate tax rates are similar to most rates in the OECD. While lowering the corporate tax rate would reduce the incentive to invert, there are reasons to suggest that it would be impractical to reduce the rate to the level needed to stop inversions. Namely, to stop inversions through a reduction in the corporate tax rate would require a U.S. corporate tax rate set equal to the lowest tax rate of a destination company, or zero. A lower corporate tax rate alone reduced the incentive for corporate inversions, primarily by reducing the tax rate applied to repatriated earnings. For a company like Pfizer, with large foreign earnings, a rate reduction could yield significantly lower taxes paid. However, as discussed below, the benefit of a lowered rate is negligible relative to the benefit to corporate taxpayers afforded by territorial tax systems, when income earned in low- or no-tax foreign jurisdictions is never subject to U.S. tax. Two factors present challenges for lowering the corporate tax rate further. First, if revenue neutrality is a goal, there may not be enough base-broadening provisions with revenue offsets to provide deep cuts in the corporate tax; and, if such offsets were found, they might have their own consequences for investment. Reducing the corporate tax without corresponding base broadening would likely reduce corporate tax revenue, adding to chronic budget deficits. Prior to the 2017 revision, the United States was one of the few countries that had a worldwide tax system and levied a tax on the foreign-source income of domestic corporations. Changing corporate tax residence to a country with a territorial tax system (where foreign earnings would not be taxed at all) was thought to drive inversion decisions. This issue led to proposals for the United States to adopt a territorial tax system to stop inversion transactions. One concern about adopting a territorial tax system is the strain it would likely place on the current transfer pricing system. From this perspective, the worldwide tax system provided a backstop on the amount of profit shifting or base erosion possible, because shifted profits will eventually be repatriated. Under a territorial tax system, this is not the case. Research has found evidence of significant profit shifting, especially related to mobile intellectual property, suggesting a lot of income from foreign sources is really U.S. income in disguise. Numerous other issues surround the adoption of a U.S. territorial tax. For example, while some supported a territorial tax to eliminate the incentive to keep earnings abroad, others opposed it because it likely discourages domestic investment and activity in the United States. The revisions in 2017 maintained a worldwide system, but with some changes. Income from U.S. subsidiaries is taxed on a current basis but at a lower rate and with an exemption for a deemed return on tangible assets. It also provided a subsidy for locating intangible assets with earnings from abroad in the United States. Many of the inverting firms had significant intangible assets, and it is not clear whether this new regime (a lower tax rate but on a current basis) is more or less generous to firms considering inverting. Moving closer to a pure territorial tax, as in the case of a rate reduction, would likely reduce corporate tax revenue and add to current budget pressures unless it is offset by other tax increases, although this effect would be less costly at the lower 21% tax rate. In 2027, GILTI is projected to raise $21 billion. GILTI could be retained and the rate lowered or the temporarily lower rate could be made permanent. There has been some agreement that adopting a territorial tax without some significant anti-abuse provisions could be problematic, as it would likely increase profit shifting abroad by U.S. firms. Evidence suggests that administrative remedies were successful at dramatically slowing inversions; the targeted legislative changes in the 2017 Act may have had some impact as well. There are further changes that could be made to discourage inversions. This section discusses the history of these proposals, both legislative and administrative. One approach would be to extend the rate recapture enacted in the 2017 Act for a period longer than 10 years, or to make it apply indefinitely to future inversions. A second alternative is to directly restrict the ability of U.S. firms to invert by merger. The President's FY2015, FY2016, and FY2017 budget proposals contained a provision that would have further restricted the use of inversions. The proposal would modify the 80% test enacted in the AJCA to a 50% test and eliminate the 60% test. In effect, this proposal would reduce the percentage of shareholders that are owners of the "old U.S. company" and the "new foreign merged company." The proposal would also require that the new foreign corporation be managed and controlled from outside the United States and prohibit transactions where the new foreign company has substantial business activities in the United States. In November 2015, then-Senate Finance Committee Chairman Hatch indicated the possibility of adding an anti-inversion provision to legislation to extend expired provisions. Many of these bills were introduced in the 115 th Congress. H.R. 1931 (Doggett), the Corporate EXIT Fairness Act, and H.R. 3434 (Levin) and S. 1636 (Durbin, along with a number of cosponsors), the Stop Corporate Inversions Act, would have treated all mergers as U.S. firms when the U.S. firm's shareholders hold more than 50% or when management and control primarily takes place in the United States. H.R. 1932 (Doggett) and S. 851 (Whitehouse), as with bills introduced in the 114 th Congress, would have included anti-inversion provisions as part of a broader proposal to address tax havens and deferral. H.R. 3603 (Levin) would have addressed earnings stripping of inverted corporations. H.R. 3424 (DeLauro) would disallow federal contracts for inverted firms. H.R. 1451 (Schakowsky) and S. 586 (Sanders) would make major changes in the tax treatment of foreign source income and include anti-inversion rules. Following the change in the international system adopted at the end of 2017, Representative Doggett and Senator Whitehouse introduced the "No Tax Break for Outsourcing Act" ( H.R. 5108 , S. 2459 ) which, in addition to other changes, would have treated foreign corporations that are managed and controlled in the United States as domestic corporations and treated inverted firms as U.S. firms when the shareholders of the former U.S. company own more than 50% of the shares. These bills would have also limited interest deductions in the United States to the proportionate share of the firm's assets. The last proposal (to allocate worldwide interest) was in both the House and Senate versions of the legislation ( H.R. 1 ; 115 th Congress) in somewhat different form but was not retained in the final legislation. While this proposal was not specifically targeted at inverted firms it would have increased the restrictions that limit earnings stripping. Former President Obama had encouraged Congress to act directly to limit inversions, but had also indicated on August 6, 2014, that administrative changes to limit inversions were under examination. Prior to that announcement, Steve Shay, a Harvard professor and former practitioner and Treasury official, outlined two regulatory actions that he believed could be taken. The first would limit earnings stripping by reclassifying debt as equity due to excessive related party debt in an inversion. (The second provision is no longer relevant under the new international tax regime.) A number of other administrative proposals that have been suggested (such as provisions relating to taxing accumulated deferred earnings) are no longer relevant and others have been adopted in the regulatory changes discussed above. Expanding the scope of Section 7874 (which treats inverted firms as U.S. firms) by combining multiple transactions into single ones, or vice versa. The scope of Section 7874 could also be expanded by treating certain stock as disqualified (because it is expected to be held temporarily or because it is accompanied by restrictions on voting rights); this provision was adopted in Treasury regulations; Potentially recognizing accumulated deferred earnings as currently taxable under authority such as Subpart F, Section 367, or other rules (this provision is no longer relevant with the end of deferral, but it may have influenced the decision to tax deferred earnings of newly inverted firms at the full 35% rate for the next 10 years); Issuing regulations that would generally tighten restrictions on interest deductions under the thin capitalization rules of Section 163(j). These changes would probably apply to corporations in general, and not just to inverted corporations (this change was made in the 2017 tax revision); Stricter regulations under Section 367 to immediately include foreign earnings in the case of actions that attempt to move foreign operations out from under the U.S. parent. This would make future earnings of these operations nontaxable; Strengthening and modernizing the effectively connected income rules that determined whether trade or business activity is taking place in the United States by foreign firms; and Closely monitoring the creation of non-U.S. subsidiaries owned by the foreign parent after inversion, and ensuring that assets (including intangibles such as inventions, knowhow, etc.) transferred from the U.S. firm are transferred at arms-length prices. There is disagreement among experts about whether the types of regulatory changes discussed in this section are feasible or desirable. A number of legislative proposals were advanced in 2014, when the wave of inversions through merger began. Representative Levin, the ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, introduced the Stop Corporate Inversions Act of 2014 ( H.R. 4679 ), which would have reflected the Administration's proposed changes, retroactive to May 8, 2014. The inversion would have not been recognized if the U.S. stockholders had 50% of the shares or if 25% of the business activity is in the United States. A companion bill, which would have sunset in two years to provide time for tax reform, was introduced in the Senate by Senator Levin in 2014 ( S. 2360 ). The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated the permanent proposal to gain $19.5 billion in revenue over FY2015-FY2024. The two-year proposal would have raise $0.8 billion over the same period. In the 114 th Congress, these legislative proposals were introduced as H.R. 415 (Levin) and S. 198 (Durbin). Senator Casey proposed an anti-inversion amendment to an education bill ( S. 1177 ). In the 114 th Congress, H.R. 297 (Doggett) and S. 174 (Whitehouse) included anti-inversion provisions as part of a broader proposal to address tax haven abuses and restrict the benefits of deferral. S. 922 (Sanders) and H.R. 1790 (Schakowsky) also included anti-inversion provisions, as well as earnings-stripping provisions (discussed below) and broader provisions, including the repeal of deferral. In 2014 a number of legislative proposals were introduced that would limit the tax benefits associated with inversions for certain corporations. For example, H.R. 1554 (Doggett), H.R. 3666 (DeLauro), H.R. 3793 (Maffei), S. 268 (Levin), S. 1533 (Levin), and S. 1844 (Shaheen) would each treat corporations managed and controlled from the United States as domestic corporations regardless of their legal tax home or status as an inverted company. This provision was also included in S. 922 (Sanders) and H.R. 1790 (Schakowsky). Other proposals in 2014, H.R. 694 (Schakowsky) and S. 250 (Sanders), would have eliminated deferral (taxing foreign source income currently), in addition to limiting the benefits of inversions when management and control continues to reside in the United States. Legislative proposals were also under discussion in 2014 by Representative Levin (announced July 31, 2014) and by Senator Schumer (announced August 14, 2014) to address earnings stripping, where foreign parent companies borrow from the U.S. subsidiary to increase interest deductions and reduce taxable income in the United States. Both of these proposals would have tightened the rules allowing interest deductions by reducing the current limit on interest deductions relative to adjusted income from 50% to 25% and repealing an alternative safe-harbor debt-to-equity test. Both proposals would have also eliminated or limited interest carryforwards. The Schumer proposal was intended to apparently apply to inverted firms while the Levin proposal would have applied generally. The Levin proposal would have also limited other transactions between related parties within the firm that allow untaxed investment of funds in the United States. The restrictions on interest in the Levin bill were the same as those initially proposed in the House in 2004. Senator Schumer introduced his proposal, S. 2786 , the Corporate Inverters Earnings Stripping Reform Act of 2014. Its limits on interest deductions would have applied to inverted firms where U.S. shareholders own more than 50% of the firm. The restriction also would have applied to firms that inverted using the substantial business activities test. The bill had nine Democratic cosponsors; five of them were on the Senate Finance Committee. In the 114 th Congress, S. 922 (Sanders) and H.R. 1790 (Schakowsky) included general earnings-stripping provisions for firms with a foreign parent. Earnings stripping provisions were also addressed in the report of the Senate Finance Committee's working group on Tax Reform. H.R. 5278 (DeLauro) and S. 2704 (Levin), introduced May 30, 2014, would have disallowed awarding federal contracts to inverted firms. These proposals were introduced in the 114 th Congress as H.R. 1809 (DeLauro) and S. 975 (Durbin). In 2014, Senators Brown and Durbin proposed S. 2895 , and Representative Doggett introduced H.R. 5549 , the Pay What You Owe Before You Go Act, that would have taxed the accumulated deferred earnings of inverting firms. Then Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden had proposed having draft legislation in place in September 2014, and also referred to Schumer's earnings-stripping proposal. Senator Wyden had previously announced that any changes would be retroactive to May 8, 2014.

Question: Write a one-page summary of the report 1.

Answer: The 116th Congress may consider a variety of housing-related issues. These could include topics related to housing finance, federal housing assistance programs, and housing-related tax provisions, among other things. Particular issues that may be of interest during the Congress include the following: The status of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) that have been in conservatorship since 2008. Congress might consider comprehensive housing finance reform legislation to resolve the status of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Furthermore, a new director for the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's regulator and conservator, was sworn in on April 15, 2019. Congress may take an interest in any administrative changes that FHFA might make to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under new leadership. Appropriations for federal housing programs, including programs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and rural housing programs administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), particularly in light of discretionary budget caps that are currently scheduled to decrease for FY2020. Oversight of the implementation of certain changes to federal assisted housing programs that were enacted in prior Congresses, such as expansions of HUD's Moving to Work (MTW) program and Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program. Considerations related to housing and the federal response to major disasters, including oversight of the implementation of certain changes related to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) assistance that were enacted in the previous Congress. Consideration of legislation related to certain federal housing programs that provide assistance to Native Americans living in tribal areas. Consideration of legislation to extend certain temporary tax provisions that are currently expired, including housing-related provisions that provide a tax exclusion for canceled mortgage debt and allow for the deductibility of mortgage insurance premiums, respectively. Housing and mortgage market conditions provide context for these and other issues that Congress may consider, although housing markets are local in nature and national housing market indicators do not necessarily accurately reflect conditions in specific communities. On a national basis, some key characteristics of owner-occupied housing markets and the mortgage market in recent years include increasing housing prices, low mortgage interest rates, and home sales that have been increasing but constrained by a limited inventory of homes on the market. Key characteristics of rental housing markets include an increasing number of renters, low rental vacancy rates, and increasing rents. Rising home prices and rents that have outpaced income growth in recent years have led to policymakers and others increasingly raising concerns about the affordability of both owner-occupied and rental housing. Affordability challenges are most prominent among the lowest-income renter households, reflecting a shortage of rental housing units that are both affordable and available to this population.