Multinationals Wary of Democrats’ Planned Offshore Tax Hike

A proposed overhaul of the 2017 tax law’s international regime has multinational companies nervous that they could see a tax hike on top of the pandemic-induced economic downturn.

President Joe Biden campaigned on effectively doubling a tax on global intangible low-taxed income (GILTI), a category of U.S. multinationals’ earnings introduced in the 2017 tax law, as well as a penalty for offshoring. Biden’s tax plans got a boost when Democrats swept January’s Georgia Senate runoffs, giving them control of both chambers of Congress.

Several corporate tax executives with operations across the globe flagged Biden’s GILTI proposal as a major ...