As 2018 draws to a close, the community of nonresident US taxpayers has been inundated with articles about GILTI and the transition tax. These provisions have a disproportionate impact on nonresidents because people tend to earn their income close to home, so US taxpayers living outside the US are much more likely to be individual shareholders in a corporation that the US deems a CFC. However, there has been less attention paid to several other provisions in the 2017 tax reform package that will also have a disproportionate effect on those US taxpayers who are residents and taxpayers of other countries.
The transition tax is the provision in the tax reform bill that concerned us so much when it was introduced that we posted a Call to Action! In short, when applied to an Australian-resident US taxpayer, the transition tax asserts the right of the US to reach inside an Australian corporation and tax previously earned active business income just because a majority of the company is owned by “US Shareholders”. This is a major departure from prior law, and calendar-year taxpayers were given not much more than a week from the date the law was signed to the end of the tax year in which this new tax would be applied – certainly not enough time to understand the new law, let alone plan to avoid the inherent double taxation. Furthermore, in all of the hearings on the bill, not one Representative or Senator mentioned anything about the applicability of this provision to corporations owned by tax-residents of other countries, for whom the idea of “repatriating” profits to the U.S. is not only absurd, but also a drain on the economy of the country they call home.
We are all disappointed that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (HR 1) currently before Congress does not contain relief for non-resident citizens. But it could even make things worse! The current legislative versions of the bill (both House and Senate) are poorly drafted and could be interpreted to harm individual shareholders of “controlled foreign corporations,” including small businesses owned by non-US resident Americans (even though this is clearly not the intent of Congress).
It is time to contact our Australian elected representatives to make them aware of the potential extraterritorial reach of this harmful provision. The Steering Committee of Fix the Tax Treaty! has sent an open letter to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Treasurer Scott Morrison, and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop outlining why Australia should be interested in this issue and what Australia can do to mitigate the potential harm.
