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35 Tax Features 1 (1991)

handle is hein.tera/taxfeaturs0035 and id is 1 raw text is: Foundation Leads International Tax Delegation to Europe Meet with U.S. Treaty Partners to Discuss Impact of U.S. Policies At presstime senior staff of the Tax Foundation are heading a delegation from the U.S. to the UK, Belgium, France and Germany for a series of international tax conferences and briefings on the impact of U.S. tax policy on U.S. treaty partners. The delegation includes members of the staffs of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee who are meeting with foreign treasury officials and tax policy makers in London, Brussels, Paris and Bonn. Among our treaty partners' representatives will be UK Inland Revenue officials Richard Pratt, Head of European Community and International Trade Issues; Peter Fawecett, International Division - Policies; and Ian N. Hunter, International Division - Technical. In Brussels, Willy de Clercq, Chairman of the External Relations Committee in the European Parliament, is a featured speaker, and a meeting is being held with Christiane Scrivener, Commissionaire for Taxation in the European Commission. The challenge facing fiscal authorities around the world today is daunting: how to fashion and administer a tax policy that takes into account not only traditional domestic concepts of equitable taxation, but those of other nations as well. Since tax treaties are the fundamental tool available for moving toward consensus on tax treatment of multinational corporations, the Foundation is promoting mutual understanding among fiscal authorities by hosting this series of conferences. The events are part of the Foundation's international tax assessment project. This on- going program of studies, reports, and confer- ences is designed to inform tax policy makers and business leaders on international taxa- tion. Specifically, the focus is on the conse- quences of tax provisions affecting the foreign affiliates of U.S.-based companies and the U.S. affiliates of foreign-based companies. I, Spending Restraint Gets Short Straw in New House Rule As federal tax policy has more and more become an ex- ercise in reve- Wayne Gable nue raising, Presiden4 professional Tax Foundation revenue estimators have found them- selves blinking in an unaccustomed spot- light. On January 3, the first day of the new Congress, that spotlight intensified. The House of Representatives passed an unfortunate rule declaring the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to be the official revenue estimating agency, or scorekeeper, for pay-as-you-go spending legislation instead of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). My general feeling is that estimators on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue do a pro- fessional job. They are more concerned with econometric modeling and microsimulation than with politics. But there is no doubt that the assignment of official estimating responsi- bility to OMB in the budget negotiation was an important concession to the President's desire to hold down congressional spending. When it comes to pay-as-you-go, OMB is more concerned about the paying than the going, as Rep. Silvio Conte (R-MA) said during the floor debate. What is pay-as-you-go, and why is the House of Representatives so dead set against having OMB do the scorekeeping? As part of last year's Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 (OBRA), any bill which will cut taxes or increase entitlement spending must be ac- companied by a provision which, according to an official estimate supplied by OMB, pays for the decreased tax or increased en- titlement, either by cutting a different entitle- ment or by raising revenue elsewhere. Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Ros- tenkowski (D-IL) claims the new rule will See Gable on page 6 Tax Foundation

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