EXCLUSIVE: The 2017 tax law gave big multinational companies a windfall. But they wanted more - and got it, through a series of obscure regulations from the Trump Treasury Dept. My latest, w @jimtankersley: nytimes.com/2019/12/30/bus…
The new law handed out $5.5 trillion in tax cuts, including a massive corporate rate cut. This was partially offset by $4 trillion in new measures to raise taxes, including $262 billion from multinationals called the BEAT and GILTI.
Any new tax law requires regulations from the Treasury Department to figure out how to administer the new law. Treasury’s job here was particularly complicated because the law was so hastily and sloppily written. So tax lobbyists went to work.
Possibly the biggest break went to foreign banks, who are essentially exempted from one of few new taxes on . Many tax lawyers have questioned Treasury’s legal authority to do this, including within Treasury itself: 
The big benefit for the foreign banks was personally signed off by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a former bank executive:
One important takeaway: these obscure, mind-numbing provisions are understood by just a tiny coterie of tax lawyers. They will determine hundreds of billions of dollars in tax revenue.
The official Treasury overseeing the new multinational corporate tax regulations is Chip Harter, a long time tax lawyer for PWC and Baker McKenzie, where he advised companies on the very sort of tax avoidance arrangements these new laws were supposed to discourage.
The BEAT, one of the new big taxes on multinationals, was projected by the Joint Committee on Taxation to raise $150 billion. Now even the JCT privately estimates it will raise for less than that:
Many tax lawyers we interviewed say they don’t consider the BEAT to be much of an issue for their corporate clients.
The fact that these new taxes are now expected to raise much less is very important. The Republicans were only able to pass the law thru reconciliation, i.e., with no filibustering by the Dems, because it was supposed to raise enough so deficit would not exceed $1.5 trillion.
This is clearly not going to be the case.
Last big thought: the biggest change to the federal tax code in 100 years was carried out over just seven weeks with no public hearings. Now, key provisions are being significantly undermined through a process that is barely public and almost incomprehensible.
Even some of the world’s most sophisticated international tax lawyers we interviewed had trouble deciphering many key provisions both in the statute and in the Treasury regulations.
