The Morning Ledger: White House Targets Corporate Tax Avoidance

The White House is targeting overseas corporate-tax avoidance in its budget for fiscal 2015. President Obama will unveil a slew of proposals on March 4 that would, among other things, tighten rules for digital transactions that some companies design to limit the taxes they pay on certain income, the WSJ’s Damian Paletta and John D. McKinnon report. The proposals would also address the strategy of loading up on debt in U.S. operations—generating large deductions—and then using that capital to shift profits overseas. The changes would also make it more difficult for companies to arbitrage tax-rule differences between countries, such as one country’s treating a hybrid instrument as debt while another treats the same instrument as equity.

Credit: WSJ