THE PRESIDENT’S FRAMEWORK FOR 

BUSINESS TAX REFORM:

AN UPDATE

A Joint Report by

The White House and the Department of the Treasury

April 2016
1

The President’s Framework for Business 

Tax Reform: An Update

Contents

Introduction..................................................................................................................................................2

I. The Need for Reform............................................................................................................................4

Distortions in the Form of Investment by Industry and Asset...................................................................... 6

Distortions in the Financing of Investment................................................................................................... 8

Distortions in the Organizational Form of Businesses.................................................................................. 9

Distortions in the Location of Production and Allocation of Profits........................................................... 11

Positive and Negative Externalities of Business Behavior .......................................................................... 16

II. The President’s Framework for Business Tax Reform ......................................................................17

Eliminate Loopholes and Subsidies, Broaden the Base, and Cut the Corporate Tax Rate ......................... 17

Strengthen American Innovation, Clean Energy, and Manufacturing........................................................ 21

Strengthen the International Tax System to Encourage Domestic Investment ......................................... 23

Simplify and Cut Taxes for America’s Small Businesses.............................................................................. 26

Restore Fiscal Responsibility....................................................................................................................... 27

Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................29
2

Introduction

America’s system of business taxation is in need of reform. The United States has a relatively narrow 

corporate tax base compared to other countries—a tax base reduced by loopholes, tax expenditures, and 

tax planning. The resulting system distorts choices, such as where to produce, what to invest in, how to 

finance a business, and what business form to use. And it does too little to encourage job creation and 

investment in the United States while allowing firms to benefit from incentives to locate production and 

shift profits overseas. The system is also too complicated—especially for America’s small businesses.

In 2012, the White House and the Treasury Department released The President’s Framework for Business 

Tax Reform, outlining the need for reform of the business tax system and presenting the five elements of 

reform as envisioned by the President: eliminating loopholes and subsidies to broaden the base and lower 

the rate, strengthening American manufacturing and innovation, strengthening the international tax 

system, simplifying and cutting taxes for America’s small businesses, and restoring fiscal responsibility 

without adding to the deficit. Since then, Members of Congress from both parties have put forward

thoughtful tax reform proposals, including former House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave 

Camp and former Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus. Last year, a number of Senate 

Finance Committee working groups continued the reform effort, releasing a set of reports on different 

topics in tax reform. While the Administration does not agree with every component of these proposals, 

all of these efforts have underscored the need for and the urgency of business tax reform and advanced 

the discussion in meaningful ways.

The urgency of closing loopholes and reforming the tax system more broadly has grown since the 

Framework was released in 2012. Particularly notable is the recent wave of corporate inversions, 

transactions in which a U.S. corporation shifts its legal residence abroad to be deemed a foreign company 

for U.S. tax purposes, even as it frequently keeps management and business operations here. The 

Congressional Research Service identified 23 inversions since 2012, compared to only three in total in 

2010 and 2011. In September 2014, the Treasury took action to limit companies’ ability to undertake these 

transactions and reduce the economic benefits of inversions, a step that observers have credited with 

slowing the pace of inversions, and followed up with further steps in November 2015 and April 2016. 

However, a complete solution to the problem requires Congressional action. The President’s Budget has 

proposed to stop corporate inversions and shut down a key strategy inverted firms use to shift taxable 

income outside the United States, but Congress has failed to act on these proposals. As a result, inversions 

continue to erode the U.S. tax base unnecessarily.

While inversions are a particularly prominent symptom of a broken tax system, and one that should be 

addressed immediately even absent broader business tax reform, the issues run much deeper. Even 

without changing the address on their tax returns, corporations can shift profits to low-tax countries in 

order to reduce their worldwide tax liability. Academic research suggests that the cost of profit shifting 

has increased substantially in recent years and may now cost the United States more than $100 billion per 

year in foregone tax revenue. The global importance of this issue is highlighted by the successful 

development of comprehensive recommendations to address base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) by 

the OECD BEPS Project, which were approved by the G-20 nations in November.

In the face of these challenges, inaction is not an option. The combination of the relatively high U.S. 

corporate rate and our complicated system for taxing multinational businesses has encouraged and 
3

facilitated the erosion of the tax base. It also has made America a less attractive place to start and grow 

an international business, and complicated and distorted business decisions. Unwarranted tax 

preferences continue to narrow the tax base, requiring higher tax rates than would otherwise be 

necessary and encouraging investments in less-productive activities. Our high corporate tax rate, 

combined with other structural features of the tax code, penalizes traditional “C corporations” relative to 

other business forms and results in a significant tax advantage for financing investments using debt rather 

than equity, which, in turn, imposes broader economic costs from bankruptcy and financial fragility. Tax 

expenditures that benefit one industry over another, or one type of investment over another, encourage 

firms to seek out investments that receive preferential tax treatment but do not necessarily result in 

higher economic or social returns.

Reform should not only eliminate undesirable incentives; it should also provide incentives to support 

economic activities that benefit the broader economy. For this reason, policies to strengthen innovation, 

clean energy, and manufacturing, in addition to supporting America’s small businesses, are important 

components of the President’s approach to business tax reform. This agenda includes an expanded and 

simplified tax credit for research activities, enhanced provisions allowing small firms to write off more of 

the cost of new investments, and tax credits to support investments in clean energy. In December 2015, 

Congress enacted several important pieces of this agenda, including making permanent the Research and 

Experimentation (R&E) tax credit for the first time since its initial enactment in the early 1980s, enhancing 

incentives for small business investment, and extending tax credits for renewable energy production and 

investments in clean energy technology. However, while these steps reflect significant improvements in 

the law, the hard work of tax reform remains to be done. Moreover, in enacting these policies Congress 

did not offset their cost as it should have, increasing the importance of restoring fiscal responsibility to 

the tax reform effort. Consistent with the President’s long-standing principle that business tax reform 

must be revenue neutral in the long run, reform should be fully paid for, including paying for those

provisions that have already been enacted.

This update reviews the need for reform of the U.S. business tax system and the key elements of the 

President’s Framework. In addition, it details the specific proposals the President has put forward, 

including a comprehensive approach to reforming the international tax system. 
4

I. The Need for Reform

The U.S. corporate income tax combines the highest statutory rate among advanced economies with a 

base narrowed by loopholes, tax expenditures, and tax planning strategies. In addition to the corporate 

income tax, the United States operates a second, parallel system of business taxation for pass-through 

entities—businesses whose earnings are taxed on the owners’ income tax returns rather than a separate 

entity-level return. The U.S. business tax system allows some companies to avoid significant tax liability, 

while others pay tax at a high rate. It distorts important economic decisions about where to produce, how 

to finance investments, and what industries and assets to invest in. The system also is too complicated, 

and that complexity hurts America’s small businesses and allows large corporations to reduce their tax 

liability by shifting profits around the globe. 

The current business tax system reduces productivity, output, and wages through its impact on the 

location of production and allocation of profits, the means of financing new investments, and the 

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S FIVE ELEMENTS OF BUSINESS TAX REFORM

I. Eliminate dozens of tax loopholes and subsidies, broaden the base, and cut the corporate 

tax rate to spur growth in America: The Framework would eliminate dozens of different tax 

expenditures and fundamentally reform the business tax base to reduce distortions that hurt 

productivity and growth. It would reinvest these savings to lower the corporate tax rate to 

28 percent, putting the United States in line with major competitor countries and 

encouraging greater investment in America.

II. Strengthen American innovation, clean energy, and manufacturing: The Framework would 

expand incentives for research and development and clean energy while also refocusing the 

manufacturing deduction.

III. Strengthen the international tax system, including establishing a new minimum tax on 

foreign earnings to encourage domestic investment: Our tax system should not give 

companies an incentive to locate production overseas or engage in accounting games to 

shift profits abroad, eroding the U.S. tax base. Introducing a 19 percent minimum tax on 

foreign earnings would help address profit shifting and discourage a global race to the 

bottom in tax rates.

IV. Simplify and cut taxes for America’s small businesses: Tax reform should make tax filing 

simpler for small businesses and entrepreneurs so that they can focus on growing their 

businesses rather than filling out tax returns.

V. Restore fiscal responsibility and not add a dime to the deficit: Business tax reform should 

be fully paid for, which includes paying for provisions Congress has already enacted without 

offsets.
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allocation of investment across assets and industries.1 The high statutory rate and complicated rules for 

taxing income in different countries can discourage firms from locating highly profitable investments in 

the United States. Reduced investment in turn reduces U.S. productivity and output. Loopholes that allow 

multinational firms to shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions abroad require higher taxes on domestic 

businesses and families to make up for the lost revenue. The significant tax preference for debt 

encourages excessive borrowing, which in turn increases bankruptcy costs and financial fragility, and thus 

reduces macroeconomic stability. Tax expenditures that privilege certain industries and assets encourage 

investment in low-return, lightly-taxed projects while high-return, but more heavily-taxed, projects are 

ignored.

The distortions caused by the U.S. corporate tax system are magnified by the relatively high statutory tax 

rate. The higher the tax rate, the more a firm benefits by claiming a special deduction, reducing its taxable 

income by increasing borrowing, or using aggressive strategies to shift profits offshore. Income shifting 

has also grown worse as the wedge between the U.S. statutory rate and rates in other countries has 

widened, and the absence of reform has left strategies used to shift income untouched.

Focusing exclusively on the U.S. statutory corporate tax rate, however, does not give a complete picture 

of how the tax code affects decision-making and the competitiveness of the U.S. economy and U.S. firms 

in world markets. Other indicators tell a more complete story. For example, the effective marginal tax rate 

on corporate investment in the United States—the expected tax rate on a hypothetical new investment—

is slightly below the average for the G-7 (see Table 1).

2

 1 For more discussion of the economic case for business tax reform, see: Council of Economic Advisers. “Economic 

Report of the President.” 2015. Chapter 5. 

https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/cea_2015_erp_complete.pdf 2 The effective marginal tax rates (EMTRs) reported in Table 1 take into account temporary incentives in place in 

2015, including 50 percent bonus depreciation in the United States. EMTRs reported elsewhere in this update do 

not take these temporary incentives into account.

Statutory Corporate Tax Rate Effective Marginal Tax Rate

Country (including subnational taxes) (including subnational taxes)a

Canada 26.3 12.5

France 34.4 24.0

Germany 30.2 21.2

Italyb 31.3 5.2

Japan 32.1 24.5

United Kingdom 20.0 19.0

United States 39.0 18.1

G-7 Average Excluding the U.S.c 29.6 19.4

Table 1: G-7 Statutory Corporate Tax Rates (in Percent), 2015

a. EMTRs reported in this table include temporary incentives for investment, including 50% bonus depreciation in the United States.

b. The statutory rate for Italy includes the 3.9 percent IRAP regional production tax not in the reported OECD rate.

c. The G-7 average is calculated using 2014 gross domestic product (in current US dollars) as weights.

Source: OECD and U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Tax Analysis.
6

Business tax reform must consider and balance different measures. The fact that U.S. firms face a 

relatively high statutory rate but do not pay similarly high rates on marginal investments suggests the 

need for a reform of the corporate tax system that lowers the statutory rate while broadening the tax 

base to maintain at least the same level of revenue. A broader tax base with fewer unjustified loopholes 

and subsidies would level the effective marginal tax rates, regardless of the type and location of 

investments. As a result, decisions would more likely be made for business reasons and not for tax 

reasons, thus improving the overall quality of investment.

Reducing the number of tax expenditures and loopholes would reduce the complexity of the tax system

and lessen the tax compliance burden for large corporations and small businesses alike. The proliferation 

of tax preferences has created the need for additional rules and regulations to ensure that incentives are 

limited to their intended beneficiaries. Small business owners have to spend time and money learning 

about tax incentives and often rely on third parties to help them navigate the thicket of complex tax 

rules, while large corporations employ lawyers and accountants to structure transactions to minimize 

taxes. The IRS has to spend resources monitoring and enforcing the rules. Disputes invariably arise 

between the IRS and taxpayers, and society expends resources adjudicating these disputes.

In sum, the tax expenditures and loopholes in the U.S. tax system, together with the structure of the 

corporate tax system, produce significant distortions that can result in a less efficient allocation of capital, 

reducing the productive capacity of the economy and U.S. living standards. The distortions created by the 

tax system are explored further below.

Distortions in the Form of Investment by Industry and Asset

Tax expenditures vary dramatically by industry. These differences manifest themselves in disparate 

average tax rates across industries. Table 2 shows effective actual federal corporate tax rates by industry 

for the period 2007-2010. The overall average federal tax rate for U.S. corporations was 23 percent—well 

below the federal statutory rate of 35 percent. Within that average, there was considerable variation by 

industry—from a low of a 14.5 percent average tax rate for utilities to a 30.3 percent average tax rate for 

construction. Tax preferences also lead to different effective marginal tax rates across types of assets, as 

Figure 1 illustrates.
7

Industry Effective Actual Corporate Tax Rate

Utilities 14.5

Leasing 17.7

Transport and Warehouse 18.6

Mining 21.6

Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing 22.0

Real Estate 22.4

Manufacturing 22.4

Insurance 23.1

Finance 23.1

Information 24.2

Wholesale-Retail 27.9

All Services 29.4

Construction 30.3

Average Effective Actual Tax Rate 23.3

Source: U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Tax Analysis.

Table 2: Effective Actual Federal Corporate Tax Rates by Industry, 2007-2010
8

The result is a tax system that distorts investment decisions. By allocating capital inefficiently, this system 

lowers living standards now and also could impede technological innovation.3 The pace of innovation is a 

key determinant of economic growth, and innovation tends to be directly related to those areas in which 

we make capital investments. Firms do not reap the benefits of technological advances until new capital 

is brought into production. Given this interplay between innovation and capital accumulation, the 

distortions created by the current corporate income tax may slow economic growth over the long term.

These challenges are particularly notable because subsidies in the current tax code contribute to low 

effective tax rates on fossil fuel and other extractive industries, even as we face long-term challenges 

requiring us to create a sustainable energy future. Income from an investment in structures for oil 

petroleum and natural gas faced an effective total marginal tax rate (including corporate and investor 

level taxes) in 2014 of about 19 percent as compared to a 36 percent rate for manufacturing buildings.4

Distortions in the Financing of Investment

The current corporate tax code encourages corporations to finance themselves with debt rather than 

with equity. Specifically, under the current tax code, corporate dividends are not deductible in computing 

corporate taxable income, but interest payments are. This disparity creates a sizable wedge in the 

effective tax rates applied to returns from investments financed with equity versus debt. Profits 

generated by an equity-financed investment will be taxed at the 35 percent corporate rate, leaving 65 

percent of the profits for dividend payments to shareholders. In contrast, profits from the same 

investment funded by debt will only be taxed to the extent they exceed the associated interest payments. 

Once the deductibility of interest is combined with accelerated depreciation, the cost of investments 

financed by debt capital declines even further. In fact, on average, debt-financed investments are 

subsidized (i.e., their effective marginal tax rate is negative), as income generated by such investments is 

more than offset by deductions for interest and accelerated depreciation.

For example, the effective corporate marginal tax rate on new equity-financed investment in equipment 

is 27 percent in the United States. At the same time, the effective marginal tax rate on the same 

investment made with debt financing is negative 39 percent. Accounting for both corporate and 

individual income taxes,the rates are 36 percent for equity-financed investment and close to zero percent

for debt-financed investment (see Figure 2).

 3 See, e.g., Alan J. Auerbach and Kevin Hassett. “Tax Policy and Business Fixed Investment in the United States.” 

1992. 47 J. Pub. Econ. 141; Dale W. Jorgenson and Kun-Young Yun, “Tax Policy and Capital Allocation.” 1986. 88

Scandinavian J. Econ. 355. 4 Congressional Budget Office. “Taxing Capital Income: Effective Marginal Tax Rates Under 2014 Law and Selected 

Policy Options.” 2014. https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/113th-congress-2013-2014/reports/49817-

Taxing_Capital_Income_0.pdf
9

This tax preference for debt financing has important macroeconomic consequences. First and foremost, 

outsized reliance on debt financing can increase the risk of financial distress and thus raise the likelihood 

of bankruptcy. Unlike equity financing, which can flexibly absorb losses, debt requires fixed payments of 

interest and principal and allows creditors to force a firm into bankruptcy. A solvent firm with limited 

liquidity that is struggling to make its debt payments may experience losses of customers, suppliers, and 

employees. It may engage in destructive asset “fire sales” and forgo economically profitable investments. 

In an attempt to avoid bankruptcy, levered firms faced with financial distress may resort to high-risk 

investments. In the broader context, a large bias towards debt financing in the tax code may lead to 

greater aggregate leverage, making the broader economy less resilient and more susceptible to severe 

downturns.

5

Distortions in the Organizational Form of Businesses

Businesses may be organized under a variety of different forms, including C-corporations, S-corporations, 

partnerships, and sole-proprietorships. These organizational forms offer varying legal, regulatory, and tax 

treatments. The primary difference in tax treatment lies between C-corporations, on the one hand, and 

S-corporations, partnerships, and sole-proprietorships, on the other. C-corporations are subject to the 

corporate tax, while pass-through entities are not. (These businesses are known as “pass-through” 

entities because profits pass through to owners and owners pay tax on their individual tax returns.)

The combined effect of the differences in tax treatment is a lower effective tax rate for pass-through 

entities relative to C-corporations. As shown in Figure 3, the effective marginal tax rate on new 

 5 See, e.g., Ruud A. De Mooij. “Tax Biases to Debt Finance: Assessing the Problem, Finding Solutions.” 2011. 33

Fiscal Studies 489.
10

investment by C-corporations is now 30 percent, while the effective marginal tax rate on new investment 

by pass-through businesses is 25 percent.6

As a result, companies are increasingly choosing to organize themselves as pass-through businesses in 

order to avoid corporate tax liability. Pass-through businesses represented less than one quarter of net 

business income in 1980 but about 60 percent of net business income in 2012, the most recent year with 

data available (see Figure 4).7 While nearly all pass-through income in 1980 accrued to sole 

proprietorships, the share of income attributable to these entities has decreased over the last three 

decades. In their place, partnerships and S corporations have grown from a negligible share of business

income to roughly half.

 6 Calculations of the Treasury Office of Tax Analysis.

7 Internal Revenue Service (IRS). “Statistics of Income.” www.irs.gov/taxstats.
11

The ability of pass-through entities to take advantage of preferential tax treatment has placed businesses 

organizing as C-corporations at a disadvantage. By allowing pass-through entities preferential treatment, 

the tax code distorts choices of organizational form, which can lead to losses in economic efficiency. 8

Distortions in the Location of Production and Allocation of Profits

The U.S. system for taxing multinational corporations rewards U.S. companies that shift their reported 

profits abroad to lower-tax jurisdictions and encourages inversions—transactions in which U.S.-based 

corporations relocate their tax residence to low-tax countries by merging with a foreign corporation. 

These incentives to manipulate tax rules in order to shift profits actually earned in the United States to 

low-tax jurisdictions erode the corporate tax base, requiring higher rates elsewhere to achieve the same 

revenue. They also impose significant costs on the U.S. economy by creating economic distortions that 

sometimes encourage firms to invest and grow business activities abroad rather than at home and by 

causing firms to devote resources to tax planning instead of productive investment. At the same time, the 

current tax system can impose a relatively heavy tax burden on the income from some investments that 

companies must make overseas and that compete with foreign-owned operations which can be taxed at 

lower rates, limiting the opportunities of U.S.-based firms and workers. 

Several of these problems arise because the current U.S. tax system taxes foreign subsidiaries of U.S.-

based multinationals on their overseas income (net of a tax credit for foreign taxes paid), but only when 

that income is repatriated to the United States, a rule called deferral (since it defers taxation of the 

 8 See, e.g., Austan Goolsbee. “The Impact of the Corporate Income Tax: Evidence from State Organizational Form 

Data.” 2004. 88 J. Pub. Econ. 2283; Jeffrey K. Mackie-Mason and Roger H. Gordon. “How Much Do Taxes 

Discourage Incorporation?” 1997. 52 J. Fin. 477; Roger H. Gordon and Jeffrey K. Mackie-Mason. “Tax Distortions to 

the Choice of Organizational Form.” 1994. 55 J. Pub. Econ. 279.
12

income). Because that income may be retained abroad indefinitely, the result is that firms may never face 

U.S. taxes on much of their foreign income, making the system much more like a territorial system—a 

system in which taxes are never paid on foreign income—for many companies. Because of deferral, U.S. 

corporations have a significant opportunity to reduce overall taxes paid by shifting profits to low-tax 

jurisdictions, either by moving their operations and jobs there or by relying on accounting tools and 

current transfer pricing practices to shift profits there.

Indeed, because of deferral and other complex rules for the taxation of U.S. multinationals, the U.S. tax 

system can create greater incentives to manipulate the location of foreign income than would arise under 

either a pure territorial system or a pure worldwide tax system in which all foreign income was taxed 

when earned. In particular, simulations by Rosanne Altshuler and Harry Grubert, which assume a statutory 

corporate rate of 30 percent but otherwise match the features of current U.S. law,show that the effective 

marginal tax rate on investments by a hypothetical U.S. multinational in a low-tax country is -24 percent 

after accounting for shifting of intangibles, and the effective marginal tax rate on investments in a hightax country is 13 percent after accounting for earnings stripping (Figure 5).9 These simulations suggest

that, though the United States ostensibly imposes a worldwide tax, the difference in effective marginal 

tax rates between high-and low-tax jurisdictions abroad can look more like a territorial system. Moreover, 

the tax rates in both high-and low-tax countries can be well below the rates that would apply under either 

a true worldwide system or even a theoretically ideal territorial system unaffected by base erosion or 

profit shifting.

 9 Harry Grubert and Rosanne Altshuler. "Fixing the system: an analysis of alternative proposals for the reform of 

international tax.” 2012. 66 Nat. Tax J. 671. For these computations, the low-tax country is assumed to have a 

statutory rate of 5 percent and the high-tax country a rate of 25 percent. The activities in each country and the 

associated tax planning strategies correspond to common behavior of U.S. companies in such countries.
13

Evidence shows that U.S. multinationals’ decisions about where to invest are sensitive to effective tax 

rates in foreign jurisdictions.10 There also is strong evidence that corporations use accounting mechanisms 

to shift profits from where they are actually earned to tax havens and other low-tax jurisdictions. Table 3 

shows profits of U.S. corporations reported in select, small countries with very low tax rates. In a number 

of cases, the amount of profits far exceeds the country’s actual output, suggesting the degree to which 

companies use these countries to shelter profits that were quite obviously earned elsewhere. In 2010, for 

example, subsidiaries of U.S. companies (“controlled foreign corporations”) reported profits in the 

Cayman Islands totaling more than 20 times that country’s entire economic output. Even in the 

Netherlands, which has a much larger economy, U.S. controlled foreign corporation profits amounted to 

17 percent of GDP. It is implausible that the high concentration of U.S. profits for the countries shown in 

Table 3 reflects the actual business activity of these firms rather than tax planning.

The U.S. tax system also provides incentives and opportunities for corporations to reduce their tax 

burdens by relocating their tax residence to a lower-tax country through a corporate inversion. A 

corporate inversion is a transaction in which a U.S.-based multinational firm merges with a foreign 

corporation and the U.S. parent of the group is replaced by the foreign corporation, typically located in a 

low-tax country. These transactions can substantially reduce the U.S. tax liability of the multinational 

group with only minimal changes to its operation. There is nothing illegal about corporate inversions, but 

these transactions point to a basic unfairness where corporations take advantage of the many benefits of 

operating in the United States—including reliable rule of law, intellectual property protection, 

government support for basic research, an educated workforce, and publicly-provided infrastructure—

and then avoid paying their fair share of taxes. 

One reason corporations pursue inversions is to remove the earnings of their foreign subsidiaries from 

the U.S. tax base. But another key incentive for inverting is to allow the corporation to reduce the taxes it 

pays on its domestic (U.S. source) income through base erosion (or income shifting) techniques such as 

earnings stripping and aggressive transfer pricing. For example, one common way for an inverted (or 

foreign-parented) corporation to move, or “strip” earnings from the U.S. corporate tax base to a low- tax 

 10 See, e.g., Rosanne Altshuler and Harry Grubert. “Taxpayer Responses to Competitive Tax Policies and Tax Policy 

Responses to Competitive Taxpayers: Recent Evidence.” 2004. Tax Notes Int’l: Special Reports; Harry Grubert and 

John Mutti. “Taxes, Tariffs and Transfer Pricing in Multinational Corporation Decision Making.” 1991. 73 Rev. Econ. 

And Stats. 285.

Country

Profits of U.S. Controlled Foreign 

Corporations as a Share of GDP

Bahamas 71%

Bermuda 1,614%

British Virgin Islands 1,804%

Cayman Islands 2,066%

Cyprus 14%

Ireland 42%

Luxembourg 127%

Netherlands 17%

Source: Jane G. Gravelle, Cong. Res. Service, Tax Havens International Tax Avoidance and Evasion (2015).

Table 3: U.S. Controlled Foreign Company Profits Relative to GDP, 2010
14

jurisdiction, is for the company to borrow from a related foreign company in the low-tax jurisdiction, and 

pay interest that is tax deductible in the United States. Earnings stripping not only reduces corporate tax

revenues, it also imposes competitive disadvantages on purely domestic U.S. firms and multinational firms 

that have maintained their U.S. residence. 

In the last major tax reform in 1986, the United States cut its corporate rate to well below average for

the advanced economies that comprise the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 

(OECD). Other countries followed suit by reducing their statutory corporate rates to the point where the 

U.S. statutory rate is now 11.5 percentage points above the OECD average (see Figure 6). The reduction 

in tax rates abroad has increased the incentive to shift income offshore. At the same time, the United 

States has failed to adequately protect its tax base by curbing income shifting and inversions directly.

The empirical evidence suggests that income-shifting behavior by multinational corporations is a 

significant and growing concern that should be addressed through tax reform.11 The pre-tax profitability 

of controlled foreign corporations is negatively correlated with local country statutory tax rates, taking 

into account real economic factors such as financial structure, capital employed, and other non-transfer 

pricing operational aspects of multinational groups.12 In addition to the evidence that companies 

generally shift income from high-tax foreign countries to low-tax foreign countries, there also is evidence 

 11 See, e.g., Eric J. Bartelsman and Roel M.W.J. Beetsma. “Why Pay More? Corporate Tax Avoidance Through 

Transfer Pricing in OECD Countries.” 2003. 87 J. Pub. Econ. 2225; Edward D. Kleinbard. “Stateless Income.” 2011. 

65 Tax Law Rev. 99. 12 See, e.g., review of the literature, Department of the Treasury. “Ch. III: Study of Transfer Pricing.” November 

2007. Report to the Congress on Earnings Stripping, Transfer Pricing and U.S. Income Tax Treaties. 

https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/Documents/ajca2007.pdf; Jane Gravelle. “Tax Havens: 

International Tax Avoidance and Evasion” 2009. 62 Nat’l Tax J. 727.
15

of income shifting specifically from the United States to other countries.

13 Income shifting from the 

United States to other countries significantly erodes the U.S. tax base and leads to lower corporate tax 

receipts, draining as much as $100 billion in corporate revenue from the United States every year, 

according to one analysis.14 Evidence suggests that high statutory tax rates also may affect a company’s 

willingness to locate in the United States following mergers and acquisitions.15

 13 Harry Grubert. “Foreign Taxes and the Growing Share of Multinational Company Income Abroad: Profits, Not 

Sales, Are Being Globalized.” 2012. 65 Nat’l Tax J. 247. 14 Kimberly A. Clausing. “The Effect of Profit Shifting on the Corporate Tax Base in the United States and Beyond.” 

2016. Tax Notes. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2685442 15 Harry P. Huizinga and Johannes Voget. “International Taxation and the Direction and Volume of Cross Border 

M&A.” 2009. 64 J. Fin. 1217.

CORPORATE INVERSIONS

An extreme way for a U.S.-based multinational to shift profits out of the U.S. tax base is for the 

company to change its tax residence from the United States to another country by merging with a 

foreign firm in a transaction called an inversion. Over the past several years, a dramatic increase in 

actual and announced inversions has raised concerns about their effects on the U.S. tax base and on 

domestic business activity. While current law subjects inversions that appear to be based primarily on 

tax considerations to certain adverse tax consequences, it has become clear from the growing pace of 

these transactions that for many corporations, these consequences are acceptable in light of the 

potential tax and financial reporting benefits.

Expatriating or inverting to a low-tax country offers two primary tax benefits for a U.S. multinational. 

First, the corporation can reduce or eliminate any residual U.S. tax on foreign earnings—both taxes 

owed on foreign earnings that are unrepatriated at the time of the merger and future foreign earnings. 

Second, the transaction allows the inverted company to reduce its taxes on U.S. earnings by stripping 

taxable income out of the United States. Inverted firms can strip earnings by claiming deductions in 

the United States for interest paid to the new foreign parent. Inverted firms often increase their 

reported book earnings because their computed worldwide effective tax rate is reduced by the 

transaction.

Genuine cross-border mergers can make the U.S. economy stronger by enabling U.S. companies to 

invest overseas and encouraging foreign investment to flow into the United States. But these 

transactions should be driven by genuine business strategies and economic efficiencies, not simply by 

a desire to avoid U.S. taxes. 

There is nothing illegal about corporate inversions. However, the ability of a multinational corporation 

to take advantage of the many benefits of locating in the United States and then refuse to pay its fair 

share of taxes points to a basic unfairness in the tax system. That is why the President has called on 

Congress to stop corporate inversions and proposed two major anti-inversion measures. The first 

proposal limits the ability of U.S. firms to invert by providing that if a U.S. firm combines with a smaller 

foreign firm, the merged entity will be treated as a U.S. entity for tax purposes. The second proposal 

limits the ability of foreign-controlled companies to strip the U.S. corporate tax base using interest 

and reinsurance payments, addressing a major financial incentive for U.S. firms to seek inversions 

under current law.
16

Positive and Negative Externalities of Business Behavior

Business activity sometimes generates spillovers that benefit or harm other firms and the general public. 

For example, one firm’s investment in basic research may lead to new discoveries that benefit not just 

that firm but allow other businesses to develop new or better products as well. The beneficial effect of 

one firm’s activities on another is an example of a positive externality. The private market may 

underprovide research with spillover benefits because the firm paying for the research does not 

incorporate the potential benefits to other firms when deciding how much research to invest in. 

In fact, numerous studies find that the total returns to research and development are significantly larger 

Though Congress has thus far failed to act, Treasury has used its existing authority under the tax 

laws to reduce the tax benefits of—and when possible, stop—corporate tax inversions. Treasury’s 

actions significantly diminish the ability of inverted companies to escape U.S. taxation. For some 

companies considering mergers, inversions may no longer make economic sense.

To date, Treasury has taken action to: 

• Prevent inverted companies from accessing a foreign subsidiary’s earnings while deferring 

U.S. tax through the use of creative loans, which are known as “hopscotch” loans, and from 

restructuring a foreign subsidiary in order to access the subsidiary’s earnings tax-free.

• Close a loophole to prevent inverted companies from transferring cash or property from a 

foreign subsidiary to the new parent to completely avoid U.S. tax.

• Make it more difficult for U.S. entities to invert by strengthening the requirement that the 

former owners of the U.S. entity own less than 80 percent of the new combined entity.

• Block a particularly blatant form of inversion known as a “third country” inversion, where 

a U.S. firm merges with a firm based in one foreign country, but then locates its tax 

residence in a third country—essentially cherry-picking the tax rules under which they 

operate.

• Address “serial inverters” by ensuring that firms cannot avoid the existing anti-inversion 

rules by acquiring foreign-owned corporate groups that themselves have grown larger 

through inversions or acquisitions of U.S. firms.

• Limit the ability of firms to strip earnings out of the United States by treating certain 

payments between related parties as non-deductible dividends instead of deductible 

interest payments and otherwise strengthening the rules characterizing financial 

instruments as debt or equity for tax purposes.

While these actions have helped slow the pace and reduce the tax benefits of inversions, only 

Congress can put a stop to inversions. It can and should take action immediately. Ultimately, the 

best way to address the more fundamental problems in our tax system that are highlighted by 

inversions is through business tax reform that includes specific anti-inversion provisions. These 

provisions will need to be in place even after business tax reform is enacted because there will 

always be countries offering advantageous tax treatment where corporations can establish 

residence for tax purposes if rules allow. 
17

than the private returns earned by the investors who fund it.16 This evidence suggests that the social 

returns range from one to two times the private returns, a disparity which leads to private-sector 

underinvestment in the absence of policies such as the Research and Experimentation (R&E) tax credit. 

Studies that directly evaluate the R&E credit find that each dollar of foregone tax revenue through the 

credit generally causes firms to invest at least one additional dollar in research and development.17

Not all spillovers are positive, however. Pollution, such as carbon pollution and particulate pollution from 

burning fossil fuels, imposes costs on society from climate change and impairments to health. Because 

firms do not bear the consequences of those costs, they may rely too heavily on pollution-intensive 

activities. Greenhouse gas emissions impose significant environmental costs, which will only continue to 

grow for future generations.18 Other pollutants, such as particulate matter and ozone, impose large 

immediate social costs in the form of increased rates of mortality and morbidity, and reduced quality of 

life.19 Many social costs of pollution are not borne by the firms making the decisions to invest in polluting 

activities, so firms may overinvest in those activities.

Well-designed tax policies can encourage greater investments in activities with positive spillovers, like 

research, and reduce reliance on pollution-intensive fuel sources. 

II. The President’s Framework for Business Tax Reform

The President’s approach to business tax reform is intended to reduce the tax-induced distortions across 

industries, assets, means of financing, and different forms of business, and to address problems in our 

international tax system. These reforms are intended to encourage domestic investment and increase the 

productivity of those investments, to simplify the tax code for America’s small businesses, to encourage 

certain business activities with clear external benefits, like clean energy and research, and to rationalize 

the tax treatment of multinational corporations—all in a way that is fiscally responsible over the short and 

long run. 

Eliminate Loopholes and Subsidies, Broaden the Base, and Cut the Corporate 

Tax Rate

The President’s Framework would eliminate dozens of different tax expenditures and fundamentally 

reform the business tax base to reduce distortions that hurt productivity and growth. It would reinvest 

 16 Bronwyn H. Hall, Jacques Mairesse, and Pierre Mohnen. “Measuring the Returns to R&D.” 2010. Handbook of 

the Economics of Innovation 2.; Laura Tyson and Greg Linden. “The Corporate R&D Tax Credit and U.S. Innovation 

and Competitiveness: Gauging the Economic and Fiscal Effectiveness of the Credit.” 2012. Center for American 

Progress. 17 Bronwyn H. Hall. “Effectiveness of Research and Experimentation Tax Credits: Critical Literature Review and 

Research Design.” 1995. Report for the Office of Technology Assessment, Congress of the United States.; Bronwyn

H. Hall and John Van Reenen. “How Effective are Fiscal Incentives for R&D? A Review of the Evidence.” 2000. 29 

Research Policy. 18 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). “Summary of Key Findings.” 2015. Climate Change in the United 

States: Benefits of Global Action. 19 World Health Organization (WHO). “Fact Sheet No. 313: Ambient (outdoor) air quality and health.” 2014. 
18

the savings in reducing the maximum corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent and eliminating

the corporate alternative minimum tax. This combination of a broader base and a lower corporate rate 

would alleviate the significant economic distortions identified above that cause businesses to base 

investment decisions on tax rules rather than economic returns, and it would lead to greater parity 

between large corporations and their large non-corporate counterparts. Furthermore, in conjunction with 

the Framework’s proposal to modernize the international tax system and implement a minimum tax on 

foreign earnings, the lower U.S. corporate rate would encourage greater investment here at home and 

reduce incentives for U.S. companies to move their operations abroad or to shift profits to lower-tax 

jurisdictions. Where appropriate, the changes could allow adequate transition periods to permit affected 

parties to adjust to the new permanent tax rules. 

The Framework would pay for cutting the corporate tax rate to 28 percent and for the business tax cuts 

that were recently enacted by reforming U.S. international system and by broadening the tax base in three 

major ways, including: 

• Addressing depreciation schedules. Current depreciation schedules generally overstate the true 

economic depreciation of assets. Although this provides an incentive to invest, it comes at the 

cost of higher tax rates to raise a given amount of revenue. In an increasingly global economy, 

accelerated depreciation may be a less effective way to increase investment and job creation 

than reinvesting the savings from moving towards economic depreciation into reducing tax rates.

Several prominent tax reform proposals have proposed to scale back accelerated depreciation to 

offset rate reductions, including the tax reform proposals put forward by Chairmen Camp and 

Baucus. Other large countries have taken a similar approach: paying for rate-lowering corporate 

tax reform at least in part by scaling back depreciation allowances.20 Tax reform also is an 

opportunity to rationalize the relative lengths of depreciation schedules so that they better align 

with the economic lives of assets; in so doing, tax reform would reduce tax distortions that lead 

to misallocation of capital across assets and industries.

• Reducing the bias toward debt financing. A lower corporate tax rate by itself would reduce but 

not eliminate the bias toward debt financing. Reform should take additional steps to reduce the 

tax preference for debt-financed investment, such as by “haircutting” corporate interest 

deductions by a certain percentage. A tax system that is more neutral towards debt and equity 

will reduce incentives to overleverage and produce more stable corporate finances, making the 

economy more resilient in times of stress. In addition, limiting interest deductibility would finance 

lower tax rates and do more to encourage investment in the United States than many other ways 

to pay for rate reductions.

• Eliminating dozens of business tax loopholes and tax expenditures. The Framework starts from 

a presumption that we should eliminate all tax expenditures for specific industries, with a few 

exceptions that are critical to broader growth or address certain externalities. In particular, the 

Framework would:

o Eliminate “last in first out” accounting. Under the “last-in, first-out” (LIFO) method of 

accounting for inventories, it is assumed that the cost of the items of inventory that are 

 20 Alan J. Auerbach, Michael P. Devereaux, and Helen Simpson. “Taxing Corporate Income.” 2008. The Mirrlees 

Review: Reforming the Tax System for the 21st Century. 

http://eml.berkeley.edu/~auerbach/taxing_corporate_income_march_II.pdf
19

sold is equal to the cost of the items of inventory that were most recently purchased or 

produced. This assumption overstates the cost of goods sold and understates the value 

of inventories. The Framework would end LIFO, bringing us in line with international

standards and simplifying the tax system.

o Eliminate oil and gas tax preferences. The tax code currently subsidizes oil and gas 

production through tax expenditures that provide preferences for these industries over 

others. The Framework would repeal more than a dozen tax preferences available for 

fossil fuels.

o Reform treatment of insurance industry and products. The Framework would reform the 

treatment of insurance companies and products to improve information reporting, 

simplify tax treatment, and close loopholes, including one in which corporations shelter 

income using life insurance contracts on their officers, directors, or employees.

o Reform the measurement and character of gains. The Framework would reform the 

treatment of capital gains, including modifying rules for like-kind exchanges, which allow 

investors in certain assets to avoid realizing a capital gain—and thus to defer payment of 

tax—through a transaction structured as an exchange rather than a sale.

Ultimately, achieving a lower corporate tax rate and reducing special-interest provisions will require 

eliminating a wide variety of business tax exclusions, subsidies, and deductions. The proposals above, 

described in detail in the President’s Budget, represent the first step in that process. 21

 21 Additional details for specified proposals can be found in: Department of the Treasury. “General Explanations of 

the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2017 Revenue Proposals.” 2016. https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/taxpolicy/Documents/General-Explanations-FY2017.pdf
20

WALL STREET REFORM AND TAXATION OF THE FINANCIAL SECTOR 

In response to the 2008 financial crisis, the worst since the Great Depression, the Administration 

achieved landmark reform of the Nation’s financial system in 2010 with enactment of the Dodd-Frank 

Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. In the years since enactment, Federal agencies have 

helped make home, auto, and short-term consumer loan terms fairer and easier to understand for 

average consumers, improved transparency for investors in financial markets, and increased financial 

firms’ planning for and resilience to future financial downturns. These actions are already curbing 

excessive risk-taking, closing regulatory gaps, and making our financial system safer and more 

resilient.

However, more work remains to be done as there is evidence that the financial sector represents a 

large and growing share of the economy in a manner that may create obstacles to shared growth.* 

Business tax reform can help address the downsides of an excessive financialization of the economy, 

including through some of the specific measures proposed in the President’s Budget:

• Impose a financial fee: Excessive leverage undertaken by major financial firms was a significant 

cause of the recent financial crisis and is an ongoing potential risk to macroeconomic stability. 

The financial fee—a tax on large financial institutions based on the amount of their liabilities—

can help remedy this by reducing the incentive for large financial institutions to use excessive 

leverage. The structure of this fee would be broadly consistent with the principles agreed to 

by the G-20 leaders. The President’s proposal would take a direct action to combat the risk in 

the financial sector and its implications on broader market volatility.

• Pay for doubling the budgets of key market regulators through increased transaction fees:

Expanding the budgets of the CFTC and SEC would allow them to improve monitoring of new 

developments in the markets and to continue to fulfill their missions in increasingly complex 

financial sectors. Fee funding the CFTC would shift the costs of regulatory services it provides 

from the general taxpayer to the primary beneficiaries of the CFTC’s oversight, and fee rates 

would be designed in a way that supports market access, liquidity, and the efficiency of the 

Nation’s futures, options, and swaps markets. Additionally, increasing the transaction fees 

that currently fund the SEC and imposing a similar fee to finance the CFTC would particularly 

affect high-frequency traders, which could help reduce certain risks in the market.

• Close the carried interest loophole: Taxing “carried interest” as ordinary income rather than 

tax-preferred capital gain would close a loophole for private equity and hedge fund managers. 

In addition, increasing the tax rate on capital gains would reduce the tax benefit of the carried 

interest loophole and any other strategy that involves converting income that would be taxed 

at regular rates to income taxed at the lower rates on capital gains.

• Modernize taxation of certain financial products to prevent tax arbitrage: Modernizing the 

taxation of financial products by taxing derivatives on a “mark-to-market” basis with gain or 

loss treated as ordinary income would reduce the ability of financial institutions and 

sophisticated taxpayers to craft financial products to arbitrage the disparate tax rules for 

financial products.

* See, e.g., Robin Greenwood and David Scharfstein. "The Growth of Finance." 2013. 27 J. Econ. Perspect. 3; Luigi Zingales. 

"Does Finance Benefit Society?" 2015. 70. J. Fin. 1327.
21

Strengthen American Innovation, Clean Energy, and Manufacturing

As noted above, a well-designed tax system can help address positive and negative spillovers of business 

behavior by encouraging those activities that provide broader benefits and discouraging activities that 

cause harm. The President’s Framework identifies three areas where targeted incentives are appropriate: 

research and development, clean energy, and manufacturing. 

To encourage greater innovation, make sustainable investments in clean energy and promote 

manufacturing, the President’s Framework would:

• Expand and simplify the R&E credit. While the recent permanent extension of the R&E credit 

provides certainty for businesses investing in innovation and appropriately recognizes the 

positive spillovers research activity generates, further reforms should be made to make the credit 

even more effective. Currently, businesses must choose between two different credit formulas, 

including one so outdated that it takes into account the amount of a business’s research expenses 

from 1984 to 1988. The President’s Framework would simplify the credit by repealing the 

outdated formula, increase the credit rate from 14 to 18 percent, and enhance the credit for 

pass-through businesses.

• Consolidate, enhance, and permanently extend key tax incentives to encourage investment

in clean energy while repealing fossil fuel subsidies. The President’s Framework would make 

permanent the tax credits for the production of renewable electricity and investment in 

renewable energy technologies. These reforms would provide a strong, consistent incentive to 

encourage investments in renewable energy sources, like wind and solar. The production tax 

credit and investment tax credit for renewable electricity generation were recently extended 

for five years, but permanent tax incentives for clean energy investment are needed to meet 

the challenge of climate change and address the harmful consequences of pollution. In 

addition, the structure of the renewable production tax credit has required many firms to invest 

in inefficient tax planning through tax equity structures so that they can benefit even when 

they do not have tax liability in a given year because of a lack of taxable income. The President’s 

Framework would eliminate the need for these strategies by making the production tax credit 

refundable. In addition to these reforms to support clean energy, the President’s Framework 

would eliminate tax subsidies for oil and gas as described above.

 

• Effectively cut the top corporate tax rate on manufacturing income to 25 percent by reforming 

the domestic production activities deduction. The manufacturing sector plays an outsized role 

in the U.S. economy and is particularly important for future job creation, innovation, and 

economic growth.22 For this reason, the President’s Framework would reform the current 

domestic production activities deduction. It would focus the deduction more on manufacturing 

activity and expand the deduction to 10.7 percent, effectively cutting the top corporate tax rate 

for manufacturing income to 25 percent.

 22 For a review of the U.S. manufacturing sector, see generally: Department of Commerce. “The Competitiveness 

and Innovation Capacity of the United States.” 2012.; President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

“Ensuring American Leadership in Advanced Manufacturing.” 2011.; P. Gary Pisano and Willy C. Shih. “Restoring 

American Competitiveness.” 2009. Harvard Business Review.; Erica Fuchs and Randolph Kirchain. “Design for 

Location? The Impact of Manufacturing Off-Shore on Technology Competitiveness in the Optoelectronics 

Industry.” 2010. 56 Mgmt. Science 2323.; Michael Greenstone et al. “Identifying Agglomeration Spillovers: 

Evidence from Winners and Losers of Large Plant Openings.” 2010. 118 J. Pol. Econ. 536.
22

INNOVATION BOXES

An innovation box is a special tax preference that applies a separate, lower, tax rate to income derived 

from patents and other types of intangible business property, such as copyrights, trademarks, trade 

secrets, and other forms of intellectual property (IP). Innovation boxes and related regimes in other 

countries vary in their tax rate, in the types of eligible IP, in the scope of qualifying income, and the 

treatment of IP-related expenses.

Advocates of an innovation box in the United States argue that applying a low tax rate to income 

associated with intellectual property provides an incentive for investments in research and innovation, 

can improve the international competitiveness of businesses that rely on IP by reducing their taxes, 

and can address concerns about the erosion of the U.S. tax base to lower-tax jurisdictions by 

encouraging firms to locate their IP in the U.S. for tax purposes. 

Measured by the criteria of economic efficiency, the innovation box comes up short as a desirable tax 

policy tool. Compared to the R&E credit, an innovation box is less effective in encouraging innovation. 

The R&E credit provides benefits to firms undertaking new research which results in spillovers that 

enhance the productivity of businesses and workers economy-wide (including research that is difficult 

to commercially exploit). The evidence of the R&E credit’s success is why the Administration 

supported permanent extension and continues to propose further enhancements. 

By contrast, a U.S. innovation box would be costly and offer little potential to improve the overall 

domestic economy. Unlike the R&E credit, an innovation box has much less “bang for the buck” 

because it would provide windfall tax benefits for IP already in existence. In the United Kingdom, the 

introduction of a low-tax patent box reduced corporate tax revenues, even when companies reported 

more innovation-related income.* In the United States, the revenue costs of a similar tax incentive 

are likely to be especially large because of the disproportionately large share of innovation-related 

income U.S. multinationals earn from currently-taxed foreign royalty payments and the much larger 

domestic market. In essence, an innovation box is just another variation on a “race to the bottom” in 

the taxation of multinational firms, where countries compete to have the lowest tax rate on certain 

corporate activities, without concern for the funding of necessary public goods and services. 

Innovation boxes also work against the broadly shared goal of simplifying the tax system. New tax 

rules and compliance checks would be needed to determine precisely how much income was 

associated with particular innovations. For instance, it would be difficult to determine how much of a 

drug company’s income is due to investment in developing a patented drug versus investment in the 

manufacturing plant itself or in advertising and marketing activities. Corporations would have strong 

incentives to attribute as much income as possible to the tax-favored innovation to take advantage of 

preferential tax rates. These difficulties would lead to disputes between the IRS and taxpayers, 

resulting in increased hiring of lawyers and accountants instead of increased innovative activity. 

The President’s Framework, which provides support for innovation more efficiently through the R&E 

credit and which tackles the problems within our international tax system with a reform centered on 

the minimum tax, provides a better approach to addressing these challenges.

* Rachel Griffith, Helen Miller, and Martin O'Connell. “Ownership of intellectual property and corporate taxation.” 2014. 112 

J. Pub. Econ. 12.
23

Strengthen the International Tax System to Encourage Domestic Investment

International reform should improve on the current broken and inefficient system under which firms must 

pay tax at the full U.S. tax rate but only when profits are repatriated. There is considerable debate as to 

how to reform the international tax code. One approach is to switch to a pure territorial system under 

which all active foreign income would be subject to zero or nominal U.S. tax. However, a pure territorial 

system could aggravate, rather than ameliorate, many of the problems in the current tax code. If foreign 

earnings of U.S. multinational corporations are not taxed at all, firms would have even greater incentive 

to locate operations abroad. Furthermore, corporations would have greater incentive to use accounting 

mechanisms to shift profits out of the United States. And the incentives for corporations to invert to lowtax jurisdictions in order to reduce their U.S. tax burdens through earnings stripping would remain. 

Alternative reform proposals to address the problem of profit shifting by providing a costly tax preference 

through an “innovation box,” as described above, would only exacerbate the race to the bottom in 

international tax rates. 

Tax reform must balance the need to reduce tax incentives to locate overseas with the need for U.S. 

companies to be able to compete overseas for the investments and operations absolutely necessary to 

serve and expand into foreign markets in ways that benefit U.S. jobs and economic growth. This will be a 

difficult and complex undertaking but one that should be guided by the criteria of what system best 

promotes the jobs, growth, and standard of living of American workers and their families.

In 2015, as part of the Budget, the President released a detailed international tax plan built on the reform 

principles expressed in the Framework for Business Tax Reform. The President’s plan, which is centered 

around a new per-country minimum tax on foreign earnings, would improve on the current system in 

three broad ways: 

• Reducing firms’ ability to avoid the U.S. tax system by shifting profits overseas. The minimum 

tax on foreign earnings would ensure that no matter what tax planning techniques a U.S. firm 

engages in, and no matter where it reports its profits, it would still face a tax rate of at least 19 

percent. Unlike the current system, there would be no “deferral” of tax—the minimum tax would 

apply to profits in the year they are earned. The minimum tax would stop our tax system from 

generously rewarding companies for moving profits offshore. In addition, other elements of the 

plan would make it harder to shift profits overseas by limiting interest stripping, transfer pricing 

abuses, and inversions. 

• Reducing the incentive to shift production overseas. The current system encourages firms to 

shift production overseas to take advantage of indefinite tax deferral on the resulting earnings—

and to establish a legal toehold in a foreign country to enable even more earnings to be shifted 

there on paper. The minimum tax would also reduce these incentives by ensuring that the 

earnings of U.S. multinationals’ foreign subsidiaries are taxed on a current basis at a rate of at 

least 19 percent. 

• Increasing the global competitiveness of U.S. corporations. American multinationals often have 

legitimate non-tax reasons to locate production overseas, either to serve local markets or 

because of specific competitive advantages to overseas production. Other countries with 

territorial systems effectively do not tax firms on their overseas production, and so those firms 

incur no taxes when earnings are distributed to the parent company in its home country (that is, 

upon “repatriation”). In addition, foreign resident companies that produce locally face only that 
24

country’s corporate tax rate. In contrast, U.S. companies face relative high explicit or implicit 

repatriation taxes, and therefore may operate at a tax disadvantage. In order to balance the two 

goals above with the desire not to disadvantage American multinationals vis-à-vis their 

competitors, the plan sets the global minimum tax rate lower than the full 28 percent rate 

proposed for reform—and offers a deduction for income from active business investment.

Specifically, to achieve these objectives, the President’s plan would:

Institute a 19 percent minimum tax on foreign earnings

Foreign earnings would be subject to current U.S. taxation at a rate of 19 percent less a foreign tax credit 

equal to 85 percent of the per-country average foreign effective tax rate. The minimum tax would be 

imposed on foreign earnings regardless of whether they are repatriated to the United States, and all 

foreign earnings could be repatriated without further U.S. tax. Thus, under the proposal, all active earnings 

of foreign subsidiaries of U.S. firms (controlled foreign corporations, or CFCs) would be subject to U.S. tax 

either immediately or not at all. Passive or highly mobile income such as dividends, interest, rents, and 

royalties would continue to be subject to full U.S. tax on a current basis under the existing “Subpart F” 

rules.

To help maintain international competitiveness, the minimum tax base would be reduced by an allowance 

for corporate equity (ACE). The ACE allowance would provide a risk-free return on equity of the CFC 

invested in active assets. In effect, this would allow U.S. based firms to exclude from tax all costs 

associated with foreign investments—including the cost of equity financing—providing an even playing 

field for U.S. firms operating abroad relative to their foreign competitors. At the same time, however, it 

would ensure that companies cannot avoid U.S. tax on excess profits, such as those shifted abroad. 

Foreign source royalty and interest payments received by U.S. persons would continue to be taxed at the 

full U.S. statutory rate but, in contrast with current law, could not be shielded by excess foreign tax credits 

associated with dividends. Foreign branches would be treated like CFCs. Interest expense incurred by a 

U.S. person that is allocated and apportioned to foreign earnings on which the minimum tax is paid would 

be deductible at the applicable minimum tax rate on those earnings. No deduction would be permitted 

for interest expense allocated and apportioned to foreign earnings for which no U.S. income tax is paid.

Impose a one-time tax on unrepatriated earnings

Because the global minimum tax eliminates taxes on the repatriation of earnings, some adjustment must 

be made to account for the large stock of unrepatriated earnings on which no U.S. tax has been paid. One 

approach would separately track that stock of earnings, and tax it upon repatriation. That approach, 

however, would be administratively burdensome, inequitable by treating firms differently depending on 

their repatriation history, and overly generous by allowing continued deferral plus a lower corporate tax 

rate.

Consequently, the President’s plan would impose a mandatory one-time tax on CFCs’ previously untaxed 

earnings at a reduced rate of 14 percent. A proportional credit would be allowed for the amount of foreign 

taxes associated with such earnings. The accumulated income subject to the one-time tax could then be 

repatriated without any further U.S. tax. The revenue from the one-time tax is dedicated primarily to 

funding transportation infrastructure investment.
25

Restricting deductions for excessive interest to curb “earnings stripping”

Claiming deductions for interest is a common technique used by multinational firms to erode the U.S. tax 

base. Under current law, foreign multinational groups are able to load up their U.S. operations with 

related-party debt and use the interest deductions to shift up to half of their U.S. earnings to low-tax 

jurisdictions. This ability gives foreign multinationals a competitive advantage over purely domestic firms, 

which have to pay U.S. tax on all of their earnings from U.S. operations. The proposal would address overleveraging of a foreign-parented group’s U.S. operations relative to the rest of the group’s operations by 

limiting U.S. interest expense deductions to the U.S. subgroup’s interest income plus the U.S. subgroup’s 

proportionate share of the group’s net interest expense.

Limit inversions

The President’s plan would limit inversions by preventing firms from acquiring smaller foreign firms and 

changing their tax residence as a result. In addition, the proposal would prevent firms from changing their 

tax residence to any country where they do not have substantial economic activities if their operations in 

the United States are more valuable than their operations in the other country and they continue to be 

managed and controlled in the United States.

Close loopholes and stop strategies that facilitate base erosion and profit shifting

While the minimum tax and the reduction in the corporate rate would reduce the incentives for erosion 

of the U.S. base by domestic firms, the difference in tax rates would still provide a tax advantage for firms 

able to shift profits to their foreign affiliates. And more importantly, foreign-owned and inverted 

corporations would still have strong incentives to strip earnings out of the United States to low-tax 

jurisdictions. Hence, additional reforms are necessary to reduce incentives to shift income and assets 

overseas. Therefore, the President’s plan tightens rules governing cross-border transfers of intangible 

property and closes loopholes by expanding the scope of the existing “Subpart F” rules. It restricts the use 

of “hybrid” arrangements that take advantage of differences in tax rules to generate so-called “stateless 

income”—income that is not subject to tax in any country.

These proposed reforms to the U.S. international system are consistent with the cooperative efforts of 

the United States and other countries to establish principles for addressing the shared challenge of base 

erosion and profit shifting by multinational firms. At the June 2012 G-20 Summit, the leaders of the world’s 

largest economies identified the actions of multinational companies to reduce their tax liabilities by 

shifting income into low- and no-tax jurisdictions as a significant global concern. The leaders instructed 

their governments to develop an action plan to address these issues. The resulting action plan to address 

base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) was endorsed by President Obama and other world leaders at the 

2015 G-20 Summit. The BEPS project made a number of recommendations and the OECD and G20 

countries have committed to minimum standards in the areas of: requiring country-by-country reporting 

of income, assets, employees, and taxes paid; fighting harmful tax practices; improving dispute resolution;

and preventing “treaty shopping.” In the area of transfer pricing (where concerns about profit shifting 

were prevalent), existing international standards have been updated and strengthened. With respect to 

recommendations on hybrid securities (treated as debt in some jurisdictions and as equity in others) and 

on rules governing interest deductibility, countries have agreed on the general tax policy direction 

reflected in the Administration’s proposals, which would require Congressional action in the United 

States. The BEPS project also generated guidance based on best practices that focus on the areas of 

disclosure and “CFC” rules (rules for taxing mobile income of foreign subsidiaries). Finally, participants 
26

agreed to draft a multilateral instrument that countries may use to implement the BEPS work on tax treaty 

issues. All these steps have established principles for appropriate taxation of multinational firms and have 

set the stage for the OECD and G-20 countries to implement these approaches in their own tax systems.

Simplify and Cut Taxes for America’s Small Businesses

America’s small businesses face a tax code that is unduly complex. Often, these firms, unlike large 

businesses, are not engaged in complex transactions, and yet they must spend significant time and 

resources trying to comply with the tax code. Small businesses are disproportionately burdened with tax 

compliance, and the cost of this burden is substantial.

In 2004, small businesses devoted between 1.7 and 1.8 billion hours and spent between $15 and $16 

billion on tax compliance. On average, each small business devoted about 240 hours complying with the 

tax code, and spent over $2,000 in tax compliance costs. An overwhelming share of the time burden is 

due to recordkeeping, while most of the money burden is spent on compensation for paid tax preparers.23

For some small businesses, the cost of tax compliance is particularly burdensome. In 2004, 9.7 percent of 

small businesses spent over $5,000 in tax compliance and 11.2 percent devoted in excess of 500 hours to 

compliance. Moreover, for very small businesses, the burden of tax compliance can approach the total 

amount of taxes paid. For example, for small businesses with between $10,000 and $20,000 in annual 

receipts, the money burden of compliance is between 6.8 and 7.8 percent of receipts while the time 

burden amounts to about half—between 51.9 and 52.9 percent—of total receipts.24

The high compliance cost for small businesses is a drag on innovation and entrepreneurship. Outlays for 

tax preparation and recordkeeping are resources small business owners could have invested elsewhere. 

The large amount of time spent on recordkeeping and understanding tax provisions means that small 

business owners have less time and energy for innovation and business development. There are other 

costs to complexity as well. Frustration with the tax code may eventually lead to weakened compliance 

and a higher gap between taxes owed and taxes paid. Moreover, complexity weakens the ability of tax 

policy to achieve its intended purpose. For example, small business owners might not take advantage of 

investment incentives, such as the President’s proposed expansion of section 179 expensing provisions, 

if they feel the tax code is too complex overall to understand.

We have made considerable strides in reducing this burden. President Obama has signed into law 

numerous tax cuts for small businesses. In December, Congress significantly simplified and cut taxes for 

small businesses by permanently extending enhanced section 179 expensing, and also made permanent 

a provision excluding investments in small businesses from capital gains tax. However, more work needs 

to be done. Tax reform should make tax filing simpler for small businesses and entrepreneurs so that they 

can focus on growing their businesses rather than filling out tax returns, and it should cut their taxes.

The President’s Framework proposes several tax cuts and tax simplification measures, the end result of 

which is that the vast majority of small businesses would not pay any tax on amounts reinvested in the 

business and almost all small businesses would pay taxes based on an income measure closer to their 

 23 Donald DeLuca et al. “Aggregate Estimates of Small Business Taxpayer Compliance Burden.” 2007. IRS Research 

Bulletin. 24 Id. The tax burden can also vary by industry, with small businesses in manufacturing, construction, and retail 

trade devoting more time to compliance than businesses in other industries.
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bank statement: deducting their expenses—including funds reinvested in their businesses—and paying 

tax based on their profits. Specifically, the President’s Framework would:

• Allow small businesses to expense up to $1 million in investments. Since taking office, the 

President has secured increases in the maximum amount of qualified investments that small 

businesses can expense to $500,000—with that provision made permanent at the end of 2015.

Under the President’s Framework, and as proposed in the Budget, small businesses would be 

allowed to expense up to $1,000,000 of qualified investments. This expansion would provide 

significant tax relief to America’s small businesses and would allow them to avoid the complexity 

of tracking depreciation schedules.

• Allow cash accounting for businesses with up to $25 million in gross receipts. Cash accounting 

is much simpler than the accrual accounting generally required by the tax law. Cash accounting 

does not require tracking payables and receivables and does not require complicated calculations 

that allocate costs to inventories and other assets, and that stipulate when such costs can be used 

to reduce taxable income.

• Simplify additional accounting rules for small business and harmonize eligibility. Current law 

contains several small business exceptions from various accounting requirements based on a

taxpayer’s average annual gross receipts. Exception thresholds vary between $1 million and $25 

million of gross receipts, depending on the specific accounting rule and the legal status and 

business activity of the taxpayer. The Framework would simplify and expand these exceptions by 

creating a uniform small business threshold at $25 million in average annual gross receipts—thus 

exempting more than 99 percent of all businesses. Satisfaction of the $25 million gross receipts 

test would allow any small business to use the cash method of accounting (as described above),

not apply the uniform capitalization rules, and use alternative inventory methods of accounting.

• Quadruple the deduction for start-up costs. This proposal would quadruple the amount of startup expenses entrepreneurs can immediately deduct from their taxes from $5,000 to $20,000. 

This offers an immediate incentive for investing in starting up new small businesses, and it also 

simplifies accounting for small businesses, which must otherwise write off start-up expenses 

over a 15-year period.

• Reform and expand the health insurance tax credit for small businesses. This credit, created in 

the Affordable Care Act, helps small businesses afford the cost of health insurance. The Budget’s 

proposed reform would allow small businesses with up to 50 workers to qualify for the credit (up 

from 25), provide a more generous phase-out schedule, and substantially simplify and streamline 

the tax credit’s rules. 

Restore Fiscal Responsibility

The federal budget deficit has fallen by about three-quarters since 2009, from a peak of nearly 10 percent 

of GDP to 2.5 percent of GDP in fiscal year 2015. While great progress has been made in bringing the 

federal deficit down, the United States still faces a medium- and long-term deficit, in part reflecting the 

legacy of past policies that were not paid for at the time they were enacted and that will continue to add 

to deficits and debt in the future. Most recently, this past December, Congress enacted many important

elements of the President’s vision for business tax reform, but did so without paying for the costs. While 
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business tax reform has the potential to help the economy, these benefits could be more than offset if 

the reform effort adds to the medium- and long-run deficit challenge. Reforming the business tax system 

must be done in a fiscally responsible manner, including paying for December’s business tax cuts. In 

addition to paying for those tax cuts already enacted, the President’s Framework would fully pay for all 

other incentives extended or enhanced within business tax reform. 

Furthermore, reform must not lose revenue in the short-term or long-run, which is why the President’s 

Framework would not use temporary revenues associated with timing shifts to pay for tax cuts with longrun costs (such as permanent corporate tax rate reductions).

Fiscally responsible business tax reform poses a particular challenge because many of the policies 

proposed to offset the cost of a lower corporate tax rate affect the timing of revenues. For example, 

changes in the timing of depreciation allowances shift deductions between years but do not change the 

number of dollars ultimately deducted. Using policies with higher initial revenues to “pay for” permanent 

tax cuts over ten years generates large revenue losses in the long run and therefore is not fiscally 

responsible. For example, as shown in Figure 7, if the one-time revenues from the Administration’s 

proposed toll charge on unrepatriated profits were used to offset the ten-year cost of a permanent 

reduction in the corporate income tax rate, a package that appears revenue-neutral in the first ten years

would lose roughly $380 billion in the second decade, and even more thereafter. For this reason, the onetime revenues raised by business tax reform should be matched with one-time investments or deficit 

reduction, as the President’s Framework proposes. 
29

Conclusion

Tax reform is difficult in any environment, but the President firmly believes that the economic benefits of 

a more efficient business tax system represent an opportunity for economic growth and improved living 

standards that we should seize. In the four years since the release of the President’s Framework for 

Business Tax Reform, the need for reform has only grown more apparent. The most recent wave of 

corporate inversions poses a long-term threat to the U.S. tax base that Congress should act now to stop, 

even while it continues to deliberate on broader reform.

The President remains committed to working with Congress to make pro-growth business tax reform a 

FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE USE OF TRANSITION REVENUES TO INVEST IN INFRASTRUCTURE

As part of the transition to a reformed business tax system, the President’s plan would impose a onetime toll charge of 14 percent on the more than $2 trillion of untaxed foreign earnings that U.S. 

companies have accumulated overseas, raising nearly $300 billion. Because these revenues are onetime in nature, they should be matched with one-time costs. The President proposes to dedicate these 

transition revenues to a significant one-time infrastructure investment, which would be both progrowth and fiscally responsible. Temporary revenues do not justify long-term costs, such as a 

reduction in the corporate tax rate, which would ultimately increase deficits and debt.

The economic importance of robust infrastructure is well-established. Maintaining a well-functioning 

system of roads, airports, railways, and waterways is crucial to the American economy. Businesses 

must be able to easily and reliably move their products to market. Workers and consumers must be 

able to rely on a well-designed transportation network so that they can safely and easily get back and 

forth to work, to stores, and to visit friends and relatives. Furthermore, investing in infrastructure 

creates jobs for Americans in construction and many other related industries. 

Unfortunately, America’s roads, bridges, and other transportation systems are badly in need of 

upgrades and repairs. For example, about two-thirds of America’s major roads are rated in less than 

good condition and one quarter of U.S. bridges need rehabilitation, replacement, or significant 

maintenance and repair to remain in service or do not meet current design standards and traffic 

needs. Furthermore, our transportation system is not equipped to address growing challenges, 

including climate change, congestion, and increased urbanization. 

The President proposes a transformational investment in infrastructure through his 21st Century Clean 

Transportation Plan. Using the one-time revenue from transitioning to a new international tax system, 

as well as revenue from a new oil fee, the President’s plan would transform our transportation system 

using targeted Federal investments to stimulate State and local investments in smarter, cleaner, and 

regional transportation systems, and to accelerate the adoption of low-carbon technologies, 

autonomous vehicles, and intelligent transportation systems. It would also expand transportation 

options for communities around the country and increase the resilience of the nation’s infrastructure, 

without adding to the deficit. 
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reality. There is sincere interest in business tax reform from many Members of Congress across the 

political spectrum and meaningful overlap among the proposals offered by Democrats and Republicans—

even as there are critical differences. This updated Framework accounts for new developments in the 

business tax system and reiterates the President’s core principles—including that tax reform should make 

the code more efficient, strengthen manufacturing and innovation, fix the international system, simplify 

and cut taxes for small businesses, and restore fiscal responsibility—to set the stage for Congress and the 

Administration to work together to reform the business tax system.