Byron Dorgan: “today I'm joined by Senator Levin of Michigan in introducing legislation that we believe will help the Internal Revenue…”

“today I'm joined by Senator Levin of Michigan in introducing legislation that we believe will help the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) combat offshore tax-haven abuses and ensure that U.S. multinational companies pay the U.S. taxes that they rightfully owe. Tens of millions of taxpayers will be rushing to file their tax returns in the next few days in order to fulfill their taxpaying responsibility by the April 15 filing deadline. Some tax experts estimate that taxpayers will spend over $100 billion and more than 6 billion hours this year trying to comply with their federal tax obligation. It's no wonder that many Americans are frustrated with the current tax system and would gladly welcome substantive efforts to simplify it. However, this frustration changes to anger when the taxpayers who pay their taxes on time each year discover that many corporate taxpayers are shirking their tax obligations by actively shifting their profits to foreign tax havens or using other inappropriate tax avoidance techniques. The bill that Senator Levin and I are introducing today is a simple and straightforward way to try to tackle the offshore tax- haven problem. Specifically, our legislation denies tax benefits, namely tax deferral, to U.S. multinational companies that set up controlled foreign corporations in tax-haven countries by treating those subsidiaries as domestic companies for U.S. income tax purposes.…”