Republican members in the Senate Finance Committee are urging U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to engage with Congress on an international tax agreement for G-20 nations.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has developed a tax framework for international companies, including a 15 percent global minimum tax. The United States has agreed to the framework.
The Republican senators on the committee, led by Ranking Member Mike Crapo (R-ID), wrote to Yellen, urging her to engage with Congress on the U.S. involvement in this international tax framework. The senators said Yellen has not provided enough data and analysis necessary for Congress to properly evaluate the effect of its agreement on U.S. businesses and revenue.
“[T]he Assistant Secretary asserts there has been appropriate engagement through briefings provided by Treasury to certain Congressional staff. However, these briefings merely informed certain staff of negotiations after they had occurred and, in most cases, after developments were publicly announced and the corresponding documents were publicly released. After-the-fact briefings with committee and leadership staff do not constitute meaningful consultation,” the senators wrote to Yellen.
While the Treasury has signed off on the OECD agreement, the senators said there is still time to change course.
“As the recently proposed EU directive acknowledges, the clearly unrealistic timeline is already slipping, and there is ample time for Treasury to begin taking into account what Congress, which has sole tax-writing authority under the U.S. Constitution, is willing and able to enact into law,” they wrote.