The IRS has extended the deadline to pay the transition tax for individual taxpayers whose tax residence is outside the US (see section 3.06(e) starting on page 35 of this notice). For those who own Australian corporations and have been filing form 5471, this is good news. It gives you two additional months to decide whether to comply with this law.
The extension is the direct result of the petition campaign spearheaded by Monte Silver from Israel. It indicates that the Treasury and Congress will listen if sufficient force is applied (at the height of the campaign, 50 petitions per day were being sent to Congress and the Treasury).
An extension of time to pay is only the first step. There will be continued lobbying for a legislative solution to exempt non-resident individuals from this tax. This is in addition to recent moves towards legislation to exempt non-resident citizens from tax on non-US income.
The transition tax confiscates the undistributed earnings of non-US corporations just because the owner is a US citizen or permanent resident. Where the owner is a resident of Australia, this means that the US is taxing capital that is part of Australia’s tax base – and getting there before the ATO. When the earnings are finally distributed (as a dividend), tax will also be paid in Australia, possibly resulting in double taxation. Meanwhile, the money spent to pay the IRS (and to pay the compliance professionals needed to compute the tax liability) will no longer be circulating in the Australian economy.