WSJ Quotes David Rosenbloom on International Tax

Multinational corporations are devising new strategies to keep their taxes low, saving billions of dollars by navigating around attempts by the U.S. and European countries to tighten the tax net.

Companies that prospered for years with low tax rates are learning how to keep them that way, even as political pressure builds to tax them more. They are doing so by moving intangible assets such as patents and trademarks between subsidiaries and across borders.

. . .

Not all of the moves involved transfers between foreign jurisdictions. Some companies have begun using the U.S. as the base for their intellectual property, an aim of some authors of the 2017 tax law.

“The U.S. is relatively more attractive than it ever was before,” said David Rosenbloom, an international tax lawyer at Caplin & Drysdale in Washington.

. . .

Tax professionals caution that the international tax system remains in an unusual state of flux, making it difficult for companies to make the forecasts needed for long-term decisions. Countries are still trying to craft new rules on where corporate profits are taxed, and U.S. tax rules and low rates could change quickly if Democrats retake Congress and the White House in 2020.

“It’s a little hard to see, if you’re advising a company, where it goes,” Mr. Rosenbloom said. “You have to take it almost day by day, week by week.”

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