GOP tax bill offers protections from new rules

A top House Republican tax writer announced legislation Tuesday that he said would protect U.S. companies from new financial and tax reporting requirements recommended by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Rep. Charles Boustany Jr. (R-La.) said his bill “will provide more time for the U.S. government to prepare for these new requirements while putting strong protections against abuse in place to ensure American companies can compete and succeed.”

{mosads}The bill follows the Treasury Department’s release of proposed rules on Monday for adhering to the country-by-country reporting requirements under the OECD’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project.

Under the OCED’s recommendations, countries will have to report more financial and tax information to authorities. Certain companies will have to file a master file containing all relevant information, a local file focused on local transactions and a country-by-country report describing how their income and taxes are allocated, according to a release.

Some Congress members and business groups are concerned about these requirements, saying they could jeopardize companies’ sensitive information.

Boustany’s bill would delay country-by-country reporting by U.S. companies from Treasury to any foreign country until 2017.

It also provides for Treasury to suspend further reporting to another country if the nation abuses master file documentation requirements or does not safeguard the confidentiality of the reported information.

Abuse would include circumstances where a foreign jurisdiction requests information that Congress considers inappropriate.