Talking Tax

This would normally be the time when most companies would be closing their books for the first quarter and getting ready to report their earnings. But now, with the coronavirus pandemic in full force, many companies are simply struggling to survive and operating with a skeleton crew. On this week's episode of our podcast, Talking Tax, we hear from Todd Castagno, a tax and accounting analyst for institutional investors at Morgan Stanley. He tells Talking Tax host Amanda Iacone about the challenges companies are facing in communicating with investors when many are having a hard time even quantifying their own assets. Producer: David Schultz.

Congress and federal agencies are taking steps that, until recently, would have been unthinkable in an attempt to mitigate some of the economic damage wrought by the coronavirus pandemic. On this episode of Talking Tax, we hear from reporter Allyson Versprille about whether the IRS is doing enough to make life easier for taxpayers—and for its own employees. And Bloomberg Tax's Colin Wilhelm talks about how Congress' $2 trillion spending package is essentially a "bridge loan for the American public."

Small businesses are still struggling to deal with the chaos that resulted from the Supreme Court's Wayfair decision less than two years ago. Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) is one of the people hoping to bring order from this chaos for small businesses. On this episode of our podcast, Talking Tax, we speak with Kim, the chairman of a House Small Business subcommittee that handles tax issues, about how the Wayfair decision is affecting businesses in his district and elsewhere, and about whether Congress is inclined to address their problems.

These are trying times for CFOs at companies both large and small. Ash Noah, a former CFO for a global logistics company, says it reminds him of the Great Recession, the 9/11 attacks, and the Gulf War all rolled into one. On this special coronavirus episode of our Talking Tax podcast, we hear from Noah, now a managing director at the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants, about what CFOs need to be doing now to respond to the pandemic and about what the federal government should be doing to help keep companies' finance departments above water.

The ink from the President’s signature was barely dry on last year’s SECURE Act before many of its provisions went into effect, forcing companies to change the way they manage their employees’ retirement accounts.   Many of these companies are turning to people like Veena Murthy, a principal at the accounting firm Crowe, LLP, who helped craft the SECURE Act in her previous job as a counsel at Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation.   Bloomberg Law’s Warren Rojas spoke with Murthy about some of the changes the SECURE Act wrought and what benefits managers should be doing about them.

Andrea Grainger, head of transfer pricing operations at insurance and reinsurance giant Swiss Re, is closely watching ongoing OECD talks aimed at rewriting global corporate tax systems. She spoke with Bloomberg Tax reporter Isabel Gottlieb about how different parts of the plan would affect her industry—and why all companies should be paying attention.

Peter Blessing, an associate chief counsel at the IRS, joins Bloomberg Tax senior reporter Allyson Versprille to talk about the agency's strategy for wrapping up implementation of the 2017 tax law. At Bloomberg Tax's 2020 Outlook on Tax event in Washington, Blessing discusses challenges resulting from companies wanting to bring intellectual property back to the U.S. He also addresses initial international issues arising from the IRS's real-time auditing program for some large corporations.

L.G. "Chip" Harter is spearheading the Treasury Department's implementation of the international provisions of the 2017 tax law. He said the department aims to finish this by October. Harter spoke with Bloomberg Tax reporter Isabel Gottlieb at Bloomberg Tax's 2020 Outlook on Tax event in Washington. Harter spoke about a Senate inquiry into Treasury's rulemaking process and he also addresses what's next for U.S. negotiations on tax treaties after the Senate finally broke a decade-long treaty logjam last year.

Google, Facebook, and other tech giants have too much market power and way too much information about all of us. That's the opinion of lots of political figures, as well as of Nobel economist Paul Romer. What makes Romer different is his preferred way of dealing with this problem: taxes. U.S. states would be the best place to start, Romer says. He speaks with Bloomberg Tax correspondent Michael Bologna on the latest episode of Talking Tax.

This week, we're sharing an episode of the newest weekly podcast from Bloomberg Industry Group, Downballot Counts. It's a podcast about the 2020 U.S. House and Senate elections and the fight to control Congress. The series is hosted by Bloomberg Government Senior Elections Reporter Greg Giroux and Elections Team Leader Kyle Trygstad. Subscribe to Downballot Counts wherever you get your podcasts.

Some of the biggest investment funds—Ares Management Corp., KKR & Co. Inc., and others—converted from partnerships to C corporations after Congress slashed the corporate tax rate in the 2017 tax law. But conversions aren’t for everyone, not by a long shot. Jeremy Swan, managing principal at CohnReznick in New York, talks about the pros and cons, the questions that businesses should ask themselves, and the political uncertainties right now that signal the wisdom of a “wait and see” approach to further conversions.

Patriotic Millionaires isn’t just about advocating higher taxes for the wealthy, as Chair Morris Pearl discussed in a recent Talking Tax episode. The group also thinks fairness requires multinational companies to pay tax in the countries where their sales revenue comes from, and they should disclose how much tax they pay in each country. In this episode, Pearl talks with host Amanda Iacone about these issues and why corporate political spending is a problem.

Morris Pearl is somewhat encouraged by all the talk about wealth taxes these days. The Patriotic Millionaires, which he chairs as a volunteer job, has “made a lot of progress in moving the needle” toward its argument for taxing the rich more and paying people more equitably. Pearl, who made his wealth initially at BlackRock Inc., talks with Bloomberg Tax’s Amanda Iacone about the wealth tax proposals, legislation to tax investment income at the same rate as earned income, the “ridiculous” carried interest tax benefit for fund managers, and more.

House committees, among others, have been trying to get President Donald Trump’s tax returns and other financial documents, and have turned to the courts to enforce the effort. Why doesn’t Congress use its own enforcement? Cornell law professor Josh Chafetz thinks the legislative branch has ceded too much power to the judicial branch. He points to the Nixon tapes effort in the 1970s as a significant turning point, when Congress went to courts for the first time in an information dispute with the executive branch. He talks with Bloomberg Tax legal reporter Aysha Bagchi about the arguments he makes in his book, Congress’s Constitution, and speculates on how the cases may play out.

Talking Tax embarks on the 2020s with a lively conversation about how tax policy evolved through the 2010s. Bloomberg Tax law analyst Mary Gillmarten, a veteran of government and private-practice work, reviews the decade’s major developments—especially how the U.S. and other countries started tackling globalization and the digitalized economy. And she has thoughts about implications for our future.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is going into 2020 with some of its most complex work ever: shepherding efforts for a global rewrite of corporate taxation systems in the digital economy. Host Siri Bulusu spoke with Bloomberg Tax reporter Isabel Gottlieb about issues the OECD is facing and implications for countries and companies.

U.S. Supreme Court justices turned their attention this term to a long-standing federal common law rule—the Bob Richards rule—that courts have used to determine who gets a tax refund in cases involving a parent company’s bankruptcy. Bloomberg Tax legal reporter Aysha Bagchi sits down with host Siri Bulusu to describe the controversy and walk through the lively Dec. 3 oral arguments in the case, Rodriguez v. FDIC.

David Kautter, assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy, discussed international digital tax issues, regulations stemming from the 2017 tax law, and more in an exclusive interview at the Bloomberg Tax Leadership Forum Nov. 19. Background reading:  The Treasury Department is planning to issue regulations restricting how hedge fund managers can claim a valuable tax break by early next year. IRS Office Carrying Out 2017 Tax Law No Longer Exists: Kautter

Patricia Cummings, chief risk officer and a managing partner at accounting and consulting firm Citrin Cooperman, discusses how technology is transforming the accounting and auditing environment. Artificial intelligence, data analytics, and blockchain are changing what aspiring auditors should know—as the industry looks for “critical, strategic thinkers.”

In the U.S., religious practices have an unclear relationship to the tax code. Sam Brunson, a professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, has an idea to give some structure to the way policy makers deal with that relationship. Congress historically writes religious accommodations into the tax code on a case-by-case basis: A group of people appears with a specific tax problem, and lawmakers decide whether to write a fix. But what if there were a framework that would help them consider the problems consistently and fairly? Brunson proposes such a framework in his book, “God and the IRS: Accommodating Religious Practice in United States Tax Law.” Discussing it with Bloomberg Tax legal reporter Aysha Bagchi, he says the government will surely continue to grant accommodations. The question is “will they be thoughtful, or will they continue to be ad hoc?”