Manchin, again. After conservative Democratic Senator Joe Manchin declared his opposition to a scaled-back climate, social spending, and tax bill last week, President Biden urged Senate Democrats to quickly pass a slimmed-down bill to reduce Medicare drug prices and extend subsidies for buyers of Affordable Care Act health insurance. Manchin suggested he might support those measures now even as he’d block the rest of the party’s domestic agenda at least until mid-August. With Republicans opposed to any of these changes, the bill can pass the Senate only with unanimous support among Democrats.
As for the global tax deal… When he sunk Biden’s overall tax agenda last week, Manchin explicitly rejected a 15 percent global minimum tax, central to the international tax agreement developed by the OECD. “We’re not going to go down that path overseas right now because the rest of the countries won’t follow, and we’ll put all of our international companies in jeopardy, which harms the American economy,” Manchin told a West Virginia radio station on Friday. Still, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told reporters, “Whether we go first, second or later, the incentives exist for the United States to join this agreement, and we will push forward with every opportunity that we have.”
On the Hill. The Senate Finance Committee will hold a hearing Wednesday on the role of tax incentives for affordable housing. It also expects to meet in a closed-door meeting on July 26 with IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig on the IRS program that audited both James Comey and Andrew McCabe, former FBI officials who had criticized former President Trump. Retttig met with the House Ways & Means Committee last week.
Democrats would mandate a free IRS tax filing program by next March. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and colleagues introduced legislation to require the IRS to create its own free online program for filing tax returns and expand taxpayers’ access to their own tax-related data held by the agency. The plan would require the IRS to replace its little-used Free File program by March 1.
Surging tax collections put Indiana on track for more tax refunds. Last year Indiana’s cash reserves reached $3.9 billion, thanks in part to federal COVID-19 relief funding, and triggered automatic tax refunds of $125. Lawmakers now plan to vote on a second round of tax refunds from this year’s surplus. Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb calls these $225 payments “inflationary relief.” The state has yet to distribute all of the first round.
Did the Dutch tax office favor Uber during its audit? Tax authorities from France, Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Belgium urged the Dutch government in 2015 to help investigate whether Uber was paying taxes it owed. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reports on leaked records that suggest the Dutch tax office may have been “trying to slow down” the sharing of information during the five-country investigation. Dutch State Secretary for Finance Marnix van Rij announced an internal investigation is pending; the Dutch tax office says it has followed procedures “correctly.”
For the latest tax news, subscribe to the Tax Policy Center’s Daily Deduction. Sign up here to have it delivered to your inbox weekdays at 8:00 am (Mondays only when Congress is in recess). We welcome tips on new research or other news. Email Renu Zaretsky at [email protected].
