The US House of Representatives on 31 January approved the $78b Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024 (H.R. 7024) in a 357-70 vote. The legislation includes changes to the Child Tax Credit and TCJA business provisions plus the US-Taiwan Expedited Double-Tax Relief Act, disaster relief, and housing provisions. More specifically, the approved bill would restore Section 174 expensing for domestic R&D (but not foreign R&D) and the prior Section 163(j) interest deductibility parameters, retroactive to 2022 (with elections) and extended through 2025. The legislation also would extend 100% bonus depreciation and increase the Section 179 small business expensing amount. The bill is nearly paid for with Employee Retention Credit enforcement provisions.

The House-approved bill now moves to the Senate, where Republicans have expressed a desire to amend the bill as well as other reservations. The Senate is in session next week, after which it is scheduled to be out from 12-23 February for the two-week Presidents Day recess.

IRS officials this week were quoted as saying the government hopes to finalize two sets of Section 367 proposed regulations in the first half of 2024. The IRS plans to finalize the proposed regulations (REG-124064-19) under Section 367(d), issued in early May 2023, that would apply new rules to "repatriations" of intangible property (IP) subject to Section 367(d). In certain circumstances, the proposed regulations would permit the annual inclusions to cease that Section 367(d) and its regulations require.

Another IRS official said this week that Treasury and the IRS also plan to finalize proposed regulations that would amend Section 367(b) regulations applying to certain cross-border triangular reorganizations and inbound nonrecognition transactions. The proposed rules (REG-117614-14), released in October 2023, would incorporate, with certain modifications, guidance described in Notices 2014-32 and 2016-73, each issued in response to transactions perceived to exploit certain aspects of the existing regulations.

The Senate Finance Committee on 31 January voted to approve the nomination of Marjorie Rollinson to be IRS Chief Counsel. The nomination had been approved by the committee last year but had to be resubmitted at the start of the new session of Congress. Next, the nomination moves to the full Senate. Rollinson spent the majority of her career at EY, retiring as Deputy Director of National Tax, and held several senior positions at the IRS.

The OECD on 29 January released the first-published statistics on the International Compliance Assurance Programme (ICAP) since its inception in 2018, covering all 20 cases completed by October 2023. The statistics provide details on the tax administrations that participated in the completed ICAP risk assessments, the average time to complete a risk assessment, the core risk areas covered and aggregated data on the risk assessment outcomes. Among the findings, the ICAP cases had an average time frame of 61 weeks per case with five tax administrations participating on average. The report found that 80% of the cases resulted in either low-risk outcomes in all core risk areas covered or "not low-risk" outcomes in just one or two of the core risk areas covered. A Global Tax Alert provides details.