WASHINGTON—The Biden administration says it’s trying to spur investment in America—while proposing to remove a four-year-old tax break that was intended to do exactly that.
The break—a deduction for foreign-derived intangible income—has an odd name, but it works in some ways like an export subsidy for companies.
Congress created FDII in the 2017 tax law as a break tied to U.S. companies’ foreign sales. It is designed to provide multinational companies roughly equal tax rates at home and abroad on profits that could be moved across borders. Lawmakers wanted to give companies reasons to put intellectual property, profits and jobs in the U.S. rather than in low-tax foreign jurisdictions.
Now, Biden administration officials say they intend to repeal the FDII deduction and replace it with unspecified tax breaks for research. That decision, announced in President Biden’s infrastructure plan, marked a shift from his campaign tax plan, which didn’t include a repeal.
“I would have thought it would fit their ‘Made in America’ and jobs policy preference fairly well, but obviously they’re not thinking of it that way,” said David Noren, a tax lawyer at McDermott, Will & Emery.
