Senate Republicans concerned about global minimum tax deal

Posted on 22nd Feb 2022

Republican members of the Senate Finance Committee have written to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen asking her to keep both parties in Congress involved in negotiations on a global minimum tax, arguing that such a tax would apply more broadly than originally thought.

The letter, sent Wednesday, comes after a prior request for information last December 2021 that the GOP lawmakers say has gone unanswered. Since then, they are seeing additional concerns about the effect of an agreement in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on U.S. competitiveness and tax revenue. They want Yellen to engage more with both Republicans and Democrats about the so-called “Pillar Two” model rules for a minimum tax on multinational companies.

The Biden administration’s Build Back Better Act included a 15% minimum corporate tax, but the legislation has been stalled in Congress since passing the House last November. Republicans in the evenly divided Senate remain uniformly opposed to the far-reaching tax, social spending and climate change package. Senate Democrats are unable to use a budget reconciliation maneuver to pass the bill until they can convince a pair of moderate Democrats, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, to support it, which so far they have refused to do.

By: Michael Cohn