Letter to Congress on international tax policy

I've joined 23 other law professors, economists, and practitioners in signing this letter to Congress concerning international tax policy.  It argues against adopting a territorial tax system - especially if it's what I would call crude "cartoon territoriality," rather than a system that, whatever its name, seriously addresses profit-shifting and the use of tax havens to undermine U.S. tax revenues. It also calls for anti-inversion legislation, and criticizes both repatriation tax holidays (or deemed repatriations at too low a rate) and the proposed creation of a U.S. "patent box" regime.

Inevitably for a document with so many signatories, it doesn't convey the precise message and nuance that I might have chosen in a sole-authored letter. For example, while I'd like to repeal deferral and make U.S. companies' foreign source income currently includable, I would want the U.S. tax rate for such income to be significantly lower than that for U.S. source income, and I also don't believe in full foreign tax creditability. (See, for example, the brief discussion that I recently posted here.)

But one would never get 24 signatories, from the sorts of people (myself included) who signed this letter, without keeping it at a more general level that we all can accept, in the hope of maximizing the positive public impact. Insert here the standard reference to herding cats.