The Biden administration is proposing significant increases in corporate taxes to finance investments in infrastructure and other priorities. Proposed reforms include a global minimum tax on book income and other changes intended to limit US multinational companies’ abilities to reduce US taxes by shifting investments and reported profits to low-tax foreign countries. To promote a competitive global landscape, the administration is concurrently working with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to recommend its members adopt similar changes.

Join the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and the University of North Carolina Tax Center for a virtual event, during which accounting, law, and economics experts will address the following questions:

• How would a tax on corporate book income work, and would it be effective in preventing profitable corporations from avoiding US income tax?
• What are the adverse effects of taxing corporate book income? Are there better ways to limit corporate tax preferences and reduce tax avoidance?
• How would President Biden’s corporate tax plans affect investment in the United States and US economic growth? Are there lessons we can learn from the corporate response to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act?
• How would President Biden’s proposals affect the competitiveness of US resident corporations, and can international agreement on a minimum tax be effective in limiting harmful tax competition?
• What other desirable reforms to business taxation weren’t included in the administration’s proposals?

Keynote Address

• Jared Bernstein, Member, US Council of Economic Advisors

Panel 1: Should There Be a Tax on Corporate Book Income?

• Dhammika Dharmapala, Paul H. and Theo Leffman Professor of Commercial Law, University of Chicago Law School
• Michelle Hanlon, Howard W. Johnson Professor and Professor of Accounting, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management
• Natasha Sarin, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy, US Department of the Treasury, Washington, DC
• Jeff Hoopes, Research Director, UNC Tax Center, University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School (moderator) @taxnotions

Panel 2: How Will Biden’s Corporate Tax Proposals Affect Domestic Investment?

• Mihir Desai, Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance, Harvard Business School
• Jane Gravelle, Senior Specialist in Economic Policy, Congressional Research Service
• James Mackie, Codirector, National Tax Quantitative Economics and Statistics Group, Ernst and Young
• Thornton Matheson, Senior Fellow, Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center (moderator) @TaxPolicyCenter

Event Materials

• Agenda
• Speaker Biographies
• The Tax Elasticity of Financial Statement Income
• Firm Responses to Book Income Alternative Minimum Taxes

Cohosted by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and the University of North Carolina Tax Center, an affiliated center of the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, part of the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School.