Bill Amending Tax Treatment Of Offshore CFCs Presented To Senate

by Glen Shapiro, LawAndTax-News.com, New York

06 May 2005

In a bill submitted to the 1st session of the 109th Congress last month, Senator Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota) and Senator Carl Levin (D-Michigan) proposed an amendment to the Internal Revenue Code which would treat controlled foreign corporations established in countries designated by the US as 'tax havens' as domestic corporations for tax purposes.

The legislation put forward by the two senators stated, however, that:

"The term `tax-haven CFC' does not include a foreign corporation for any taxable year if substantially all of its income for the taxable year is derived from the active conduct of trades or businesses within the country under the laws of which the corporation was created or organized."

Countries likely to be affected by the proposed measure are: Andorra, Guernsey, Panama, Anguilla, the Isle of Man, Samoa, Antigua and Barbuda, Jersey, San Marino, Aruba, Liberia, St Kitts and Nevis, the Bahamas, Liechtenstein, Bahrain, Barbados, the Maldives, Saint Lucia, Belize, Malta, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Marshall Islands, the Cayman Islands, Mauritius, the Cook Islands, Monaco, the Seychelles, Cyprus, Montserrat, Tonga, Nauru, Turks and Caicos, Dominica, the Netherlands Antilles, Gibraltar, Vanuatu, Grenada and Niue.

The proposed amendment, which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Finance, would come into force on December 31, 2007 if approved.

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