The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations announced a hearing titled "Abuse of Structured Financial Products: Misusing Basket Options to Avoid Taxes and Leverage Limits." The hearing will examine a set of transactions that utilize financial engineering and structured financial products to effect attempts to avoid paying U.S. taxes on short-term capital gains. Witnesses will include representatives of major financial institutions, as well as from a nonprofit institution and the U.S. Government Accountability Office. A witness list will be
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The Senate held a hearing to consider the President's nomination of John Koskinen for IRS Commissioner. Chair Max Baucus and Ranking Member Orrin Hatch both expressed support of the nomination. See: Video of the Hearing. See also: Statement from Chair Baucus; Statement from Hatch; Witness Testimony of Koskinen.
The Senate Finance Committee announced it will hold a hearing on July 22, 2014 to discuss corporate inversions as well as other international tax issues. According to a letter written by Secretary of the Treasury Jacob Lew to the the House Committee on Ways and Means, there have been recent reports of a number of corporate inversion transactions "designed to change the tax domicile of a U.S.-based multinational firm" involving the purchase of a foreign corporation, the transfer of tax domicile to the foreign firm's country of incorporation, and the shifting of tax liability for the combined
U.S. Senate Finance Committee members and industry experts debated recommendations on business tax reform.
The Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury will hold a public hearing to review jointly proposed debt-equity regulations. The proposed regulations were published in the Federal Register.