These are today’s press releases from the White House:

Leveling the Playing Field: Curbing Tax Havens and Removing Tax Incentives For Shifting Jobs Overseas

There is no higher economic priority for President Obama than creating new, well-paying jobs in the United States. Yet today, our tax code actually provides a competitive advantage to companies that invest and create jobs overseas compared to those that invest and create those same jobs in the U.S. In addition, our tax system is rife with opportunities to evade and avoid taxes through offshore tax havens:

• In 2004, the most recent year for which data is available, U.S. multinational corporations paid about $16 billion of U.S. tax on approximately $700 billion of foreign active earnings — an effective U.S. tax rate of about 2.3%.
• A January 2009 GAO report found that of the 100 largest U.S. corporations, 83 have subsidiaries in tax havens.
• In the Cayman Islands, one address alone houses 18,857 corporations, very few of which have a physical presence in the islands.
• Nearly one-third of all foreign profits reported by U.S. corporations in 2003 came from just three small, low-tax countries: Bermuda, the Netherlands, and Ireland.

and

Getting Tough on Overseas Tax Havens:  The Administration’s proposal would raise a total of $95.2 billion over the next 10 years through efforts to get tough on overseas tax havens by:

¬? Eliminating Loopholes for “Disappearing” Offshore Subsidiaries:Traditionally, U.S. companies have been required to report certain income shifted from one foreign subsidiary to another as passive income subject to U.S. tax.  But over the past decade, so-called “check-the-box” rules have allowed companies to make their foreign subsidiaries “disappear” for tax purposes — permitting them to legally shift income to tax havens and make the taxes they owe the United States disappear as well. The Obama administration proposes to reform these rules to require certain foreign subsidiaries to be considered as separate corporations for U.S. tax purposes. This provision would take effect in 2011, raising $86.5 billion from 2011 to 2019.

¬? Cracking Down on the Abuse of Tax Havens by Individuals: Currently, wealthy Americans can evade paying taxes by hiding their money in offshore accounts with little fear that either the financial institution or the country that houses their money will report them to the IRS. In addition to initiatives taken within the G-20 to impose sanctions on countries judged by their peers not to be adequately implementing information exchange standards, the Obama Administration proposes a comprehensive package of disclosure and enforcement measures to make it more difficult for financial institutions and wealthy individuals to evade taxes. The Administration conservatively estimates this package would raise $8.7 billion over 10 years by:

• Withholding Taxes From Accounts At Institutions That Don’t Share Information With The United States: This proposal requires foreign financial institutions that have dealings with the United States to sign an agreement with the IRS to become a “Qualified Intermediary” and share as much information about their U.S. customers as U.S. financial institutions do, or else face the presumption that they may be facilitating tax evasion and have taxes withheld on payments to their customers. In addition, it would shut down loopholes that allow QIs to claim they are complying with the law even as they help wealthy U.S. citizens avoid paying their fair share of taxes.
• Shifting the Burden of Proof and Increasing Penalties for Well-Off Individuals Who Seek to Abuse Tax Havens: In addition, the Obama Administration proposes tightening the reporting standards for overseas investments, increasing penalties and imposing negative presumptions on individuals who fail to report foreign accounts, and extending the statute of limitations for enforcement.

¬? Devoting New Resources for IRS Enforcement to Help Close the International Tax Gap: As part of the Obama Administration’s budget, the IRS will hire nearly 800 new employees devoted to international enforcement, increasing its ability to crack down on offshore tax avoidance.

Personally I’d say it’s not tough enough.

But there are bits in there that are very good: new tax officials is a very welcome sigh for a start.

The movement is going in the right direction now. That is very, very welcome.