News Updates: Treasury Seeks Global Minimum Corporate Tax of At Least 15%

• The U.S. is asking other countries to agree to a 15% global minimum corporate tax, as part of international efforts to dissuade companies from seeking lower taxes outside of their home nations, Bloomberg News reported. “A global corporate minimum tax rate would ensure the global economy thrives based on a more level playing field in the taxation of multinational corporations,” the Treasury Department tweeted. “It would spur innovation, growth, & prosperity while improving fairness for middle class & working people.” The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development had discussed a 12.5% rate before
Joe Biden
was elected president, and the proposed 15% rate is seen as increasing the chances a deal could be reached this summer. Biden had initially proposed a 21% rate for global income earned by U.S. companies, but some lower-tax companies balked at that. The U.S. aims to ensure that the world’s 100 largest companies pay more in taxes to the countries where they do business, restarting discussions that had been more volatile under former President
Donald Trump,
who ended up pulling out of negotiations. The OECD estimates that changing how taxing rights are allocated could redistribute about $100 billion and that establishing a global minimum tax could raise as much as $100 billion a year for governments worldwide.

• House Republicans have proposed a five-year, $400 billion transportation bill focused on highways, bridges and transit systems. Smaller than President Joe Biden’s $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan and the $570 billion infrastructure counteroffer by Senate Republicans, the House bill is a reauthorization of a transportation funding bill that expires Sept. 30, CNBC reported. The proposed Surface Transportation Advanced through Reform, Technology & Efficient Review Act (STARTER Act) would increase money for surface transportation projects by about $100 billion. But it does not contain any measures for broadband access, mass transit, water projects, or airports, or the billions of dollars Biden wants to modernize schools, invest in research and development, and build electric vehicle charging stations. Republicans say Biden’s plan is too large and too expensive, and they dislike his plans to raise corporate taxes to pay for it. “Our bill focuses on the core infrastructure that helps move people and goods through our communities every single day, cuts red tape that holds up project construction, and gets resources into the hands of our states and locals with as few strings attached as possible,” said
Rep. Sam Graves
(R., Mo.), ranking member of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and a lead sponsor of the bill.

• Fully vaccinated people may need a Covid-19 vaccine booster eight to 12 months after their second shot, according to

Pfizer

CEO
Albert Bourla
and
Dr. Anthony Fauci,
director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “We know that the vaccine durability of the efficacy lasts at least six months, and likely considerably more, but I think we will almost certainly require a booster sometime within a year or so after getting the primary,” Fauci said, CNN reported. “Instead of having to play whack-a-mole with each individual variant and develop a booster that’s variant-specific, it is likely that you could just keep boosting against the wild type [of unmutated virus], and wind up getting a good enough response that you wouldn’t have to worry about the variants,” he said. Pfizer has not finished its booster vaccine trials, and Moderna is also working on a booster shot, testing the effectiveness of a half-dose of its vaccine against variants.

• President Joe Biden will sign the Covid-19 hate crimes bill into law this afternoon, legislation intended to strengthen the nation’s response to hate crimes in the wake of increasing violence against Asian-Americans. The House passed it on Tuesday by a 364-62 vote, after the Senate approved it last month in a 94-1 vote. The bill designates a Justice Department official to review hate crimes and requires the attorney general to issue guidelines for state and local law enforcement on enabling online reporting of hate crimes and increasing public awareness, The Wall Street Journal reported. “The past year and a half has been one of pain and struggle, marked by despicable and sickening acts of hate and violence against the Asian American community,” which has been scapegoated for the coronavirus outbreak, said
Rep. Grace Meng
(D., N.Y.), the bill’s sponsor in the House. Last week, a Georgia grand jury indicted Robert Aaron Long on multiple murder counts and other charges in the March shooting deaths of eight people at three Atlanta-area spas, including six women of Asian descent. 

Write to editors@barrons.com