IRS pass-through regs on the way. Acting IRS Commissioner David Kautter says within a few weeks the agency will have the first round of guidance on the tax treatment of pass-through businesses under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Tax Notes reports (paywall) that Kautter told a University of Virginia law school conference that the initial rules will hit the “high points” and that the Administration hopes to have final regs by the end of the year.
From G-7 to G-6? Not quite, but after President Trump learned that Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau criticized Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum, Trump instructed US officials to withdraw the United States from the G-7’s final conference communique. Is a trade war imminent? No problem, Trump says: “We win that war a thousand times out of a thousand.”
Twenty-nine EU ambassadors wrote a letter… On Friday, 29 European Union ambassadors to the US posted an open letter in The Washington Post refuting Trump’s claims that the US has been taken advantage of by their nations’ trade and tariff policies. The letter explains “The United States currently imposes individual tariff rates of more than 15 percent on 330 separate manufactured goods. Yet when U.S. companies sell their products to the E.U., they encounter only 45 such tariff peaks.”
After an election in Ontario: Tax cuts to come, deficit worries remain. Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative Party ended 15 years of Liberal Party majority in the Canadian province last week. Ford promises tax cuts for businesses and the middle class and vows to repeal the province’s cap and trade system for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But Ontario’s debt more than doubled under the Liberal Party and now tops C$300 billion ($232 billion).
In Indiana: Local governments get a share of newly discovered tax payments. The state’s Department of Revenue recently upgraded its technology and processing systems and discovered two local income tax distribution problems present since at least the late 1990s. The result: Indiana will distribute a special one-time payment of $21.6 million from its general fund to many of the state’s local governments.
In Germany, a call for an EU-wide tax system. Germany’s finance minister Olaf Scholz wants the European Union to create a tax on financial transactions as the beginning of an EU-wide system of tax collection. The tax could generate up to $8.2 billion per year to fund EU projects including transportation infrastructure and digitalization.
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