Talking Tax
Talking Tax, from Bloomberg Tax, is a weekly discussion of the most pressing issues facing tax and accounting professionals. Each week the podcast features discussions with lawmakers, federal regulators, lawyers, and journalists. From the courts to Capitol Hill to the IRS, Talking Tax has it covered.
Episodes
August 29, 2025 • 15 mins
As President Donald Trump's tariffs make waves in the world economy, multinational companies are mulling what it could mean for their intangible assets like intellectual property and brand recognition.
The vast majority of corporate value comes from intangibles. In 2020, such assets made up 90% of the value of the S&P 500, according to an often-cited study by IP consultant Ocean Tomo—up from up from just 17% in 1975.
Tariffs...
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August 27, 2025 • 15 mins
Big Four accounting firms are racing to integrate next-generation AI technology across their service lines and develop a talent strategy to match the industry's new era.
KPMG is focused on making sure it's balancing efficiency gains because of artificial intelligence with long-term workforce development, according to Sandy Torchia, vice chair of talent and culture at KPMG US. The firm has created new learning opportunities for ...
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August 20, 2025 • 14 mins
Proof from an ancient Roman scroll: As long as there have been taxes, there has been tax evasion.
When researchers studied a previously mislabeled scroll, they discovered detailed attorney notes for a case against taxpayers accused of using forged documents and sham transactions between the Roman provinces of Judaea and Arabia to escape taxes on their assets.
The assets in question were enslaved people. The potential punishme...
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August 15, 2025 • 18 mins
Pharmaceutical companies are scrambling to respond to the Trump administration's tariff threats, seeking to mitigate duties on their products while keeping the impact on their tax bills to a minimum.
The industry has long leveraged complex transfer pricing arrangements to cut down on its tax bills, but now the looming tariffs could spark a major rethink for where companies make their drugs and the location of their crown jewel:...
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August 13, 2025 • 12 mins
One of the most unwanted jobs in Washington is now up for grabs—again.
President Donald Trump's IRS commissioner, Billy Long, exited as the head role last week and is expected to be nominated as the ambassador to Iceland. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will fill the job in the interim.
The vacancy at the top of the IRS continues the turbulence the agency has experienced since the start of the Trump administration. Now, the...
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August 1, 2025 • 14 mins
It’s been four months since the Trump administration announced its “Liberation Day” tariffs, and companies are still scrambling to make sense of what it means for their operations and tax planning.
Rates keep changing, sometimes day to day, as countries struggle to make lasting trade deals with the US, while corporate tax and customs departments put their heads together to minimize the costs to their companies—without attractin...
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July 30, 2025 • 13 mins
Millions of taxpayers used to getting paper checks from the Treasury Department will soon have to find another way to get their money as the agency phases out paper refunds.
The Treasury will send its final tax refund on a paper check by October, if it stays the course set by President Donald Trump’s March 25 order to transition fully to electronic payments. Tax observers fear that the change could leave low-income or unbanked t...
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July 23, 2025 • 15 mins
Tax-exempt organizations are closely watching the Trump administration to see if it makes good on its intention to alter standards around claiming tax-free status.
The IRS gave a green light to churches speaking about political campaigns and candidates without losing their tax-exempt status, while President Donald Trump publicly threatened Harvard University's tax status because of allegations of antisemitism on campus. Treasur...
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July 16, 2025 • 14 mins
Tax breaks for whale captains in Alaska and spaceport builders were among the lower-profile perks included in the GOP's $3.4 trillion tax-and-spending law enacted this month.
The policies were necessary to gain votes of Republican holdouts, enabling the measure to pass in both the Senate and House in time for GOP lawmakers' self-imposed July 4 deadline.
The law moved through Congress faster than many predicted, and some law...
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July 9, 2025 • 13 mins
Multinational corporations have been hustling to make sense of the flurry of US tariff policy changes this year, and figure out how to factor that into their transfer pricing.
One place that's been in this situation before: Latin America. For decades, companies there have been navigating tariffs and the impacts on their tax planning—including transfer pricing, or how companies value transactions between their related entities.
...
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July 2, 2025 • 17 mins
The fate of the OECD-led global tax deal was rocked this week after the US and its Group of Seven allies came to an understanding that would exempt American companies from two key parts of the global minimum tax framework.
G7 countries agreed to the exemption over the weekend in exchange for Congress removing Section 899 from its tax-and-spending bill—a provision referred to as the "revenge tax" that would have hiked taxes on f...
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June 25, 2025 • 29 mins
Congress is reconsidering the accounting guardrails it put in place more than two decades ago to ensure investors can trust the revenues and asset values listed companies publish.
Republican budget proposals would abolish the US audit regulator and reassign its work to the Securities and Exchange Commission. While lawmakers negotiate over what will end up in a final version of their tax and spending bill, the proposals have prom...
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June 18, 2025 • 17 mins
The Republican-led Senate Finance Committee unveiled its portion of the mammoth tax-and-spending legislation that's quickly moving through Congress, and there's a lot to unpack.
The Senate bill has dozens of differences from the House version. It makes several business breaks permanent, softens the excise tax on university endowments, and phases out more slowly cuts to clean energy credits, while smoothing edges on the so-calle...
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June 11, 2025 • 20 mins
Recent layoff announcements at Big Four accounting, tax, and consulting firms come as the industry faces economic uncertainty and a shrinking talent pool.
The accounting profession is at a crossroads as a new class of students graduate. While recent data shows heightened interest in both undergraduate and master's degree programs, the industry faces possible disruptions like workforce reductions and emerging artificial intellige...
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June 4, 2025 • 14 mins
The “revenge” tax provision that’s in the giant tax bill working its way through Congress has a lot of people worried.
Known as Section 899, the provision would impose stiff, retaliatory tax rates on companies and people from countries that the US deems to be imposing "unfair" and "discriminatory" taxes against US companies. It was included in the version of the bill House Republicans narrowly passed last month, and now gets Sen...
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May 28, 2025 • 19 mins
Companies scored wins after the House passed a multi-trillion-dollar tax bill that largely preserved the current tax rates on foreign-earned income.
Republicans' 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act created a new international tax regime including a minimum tax on global intangible low-taxed income, or GILTI, a reduced tax rate on foreign-derived intangible income, or FDII, and a base erosion and anti-abuse tax, or BEAT.
Each of thes...
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May 21, 2025 • 19 mins
House Republicans are moving quickly to get a massive tax-and-spending package across the finish line before week's end even as they negotiate with party factions over outstanding concerns.
Some Republicans are demanding deeper cuts to social programs like Medicaid to curb deficits as part of the deal and to reduce the package's cost to extend the 2017 tax overhaul. And yet the bill increases the debt limit by $4 trillion and ...
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May 14, 2025 • 15 mins
With the massive wave of federal government layoffs, tens of thousands of workers from the IRS and other agencies are likely looking for new jobs, potentially in the private sector for the first time.
Caroline Ciraolo, a partner at Kostelanetz and founder of the firm's office in Washington, D.C., has started an initiative that connects former federal tax professionals with law firms and other private employers. She knows what i...
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May 7, 2025 • 14 mins
The IRS right now isn't the same agency it was at the start of this year.
That's because about 20% of IRS workers have signaled they want to leave or have been fired. The ripple effects of this exodus could go far, not just for the IRS itself, but for businesses and individual taxpayers trying to file their returns.
Roughly half of the 30 people at the top of the IRS organizational chart have left, many because of Trump admi...
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April 30, 2025 • 12 mins
House Republicans are pushing a plan to dismantle the US audit board and send its watchdog duties to the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of a federal budget-cutting process. It's not the first GOP attempt to rein in the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, but this time it comes against the backdrop of the Trump administration's sweeping drive to cut regulations and downsize government.
Congress set up the board...
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