Baucus, Camp road show lands in Bay Area

Intel came in at 54 on the latest Fortune 500. Demetrios Marantis, a former aide to Baucus and former acting U.S. trade representative, is now an executive at Square, a mobile payment processor.

{mosads}Both Baucus and Camp have given notice that they plan to push ahead with tax reform bill this fall, with neither scheduled to have their gavel in 2015.

But the two chairmen’s visit to the San Francisco Bay Area also underscores some of the challenges of tax reform.

Many high-tech and pharmaceutical companies take full advantage of tax preferences, like the credit for research and development, often giving them lower effective tax rates than retailers and other sectors.

Apple, for instance, has said that it understands that it would likely pay more taxes under a reformed code, but that it’s willing to make the trade. But it remains to be seen whether other high-tech companies would make the same decision.

Members of the technology sector have also been known to keep profits abroad and are pushing for a system that would further limit U.S. taxation of offshore income. But some liberals are deeply skeptical of such a plan, known as a territorial system.