Daily Deduction When Sharing is Caring… or Scary
Renu Zaretsky
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There may be a Trump-less GOP presidential debate tonight. Will people care about the event without Donald Trump in attendance? Care or don’t care, watch or don’t watch—but do check out TPC’s scorecard of presidential candidates’ tax plans. First Google, now Facebook: The United Kingdom wants more back taxes. British authorities are auditing the social media giant to determine what taxes it still might owe for 2010 through 2014. Facebook has set aside cash to cover potential tax assessments, but has not disclosed the amount, as it insists it won’t have to pay. Meanwhile, the OECD has a signed sharing agreement. Thirty-one countries have signed on to rules to stop companies from using complex tax arrangements to avoid paying corporate tax. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development shepherded the agreement through last year. International companies must now disclose additional information about income and taxes. Every  country that signed the agreement will have access to that information. Oops: An Uber driver’s tax information just became part of the sharing economy. When Uber drivers logged on to the firm’s partner dashboard to check their own 1099 information for 2015, they instead got data about a Florida Uber driver. How many drivers saw the driver’s Social Security number and other tax information before Uber caught the software glitch? Not clear, but the company says it has fixed the problem. What will become of Japan’s scheduled sales tax increase? The nation has already delayed until April, 2017 its plans to raise the tax rate from 8 percent to 10 percent out of recession concerns. Some Japanese officials want to exempt food from the scheduled increase—or postpone again. Others want to replace the tax hike with spending cuts. Interested in subscribing to the Daily Deduction, the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center summary of the day’s tax news? Sign-up here to get the Daily Deduction delivered to your inbox every morning. If you’d like to tell us about a new research paper or have any comments about our feature, write us at dailydeduction “at” taxpolicycenter “dot” org.