Abigail Friedman, Latham & Watkins LLP
Jonathan Goldman, Chief Tax Advisor (D), U.S. Senate Committee on Finance
Glenn Miller, Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP
Derek Theurer, Venable LLP and former Acting Deputy Secretary of the Treasury (Invited)
Bela Unell, KPMG LLP
Several legislative proposals have been put forward relating to the taxation of AI, and each raises questions. Taking a tax in newly issued equity puts a fifty percent ownership shift at the center of the analysis, along with the character and deductibility of the exaction, the valuation of privately held issuers, the expanded Section 7874 rules, and the threshold question whether an exaction structured this way is an excise tax at all. The data center proposals raise a different set: what counts as a data center and as an operator, whether a deemed-minimum gross receipts regime built on cost-plus principles can be administered without importing the whole of transfer pricing, and how a low-rate gross receipts tax translates into effective rates on net income. This panel works through the drafting as it stands, including any discussion draft released in the interim.