As your company experiences increasing global commercialization of products, services and technologies, you may face new tax challenges and uncertainties.
“Even the smallest of companies are experiencing some interaction with global suppliers or customers,” says George Koutouras, partner, international and transaction tax, at Moss Adams. “So that means they have the need to consider certain tax aspects associated with global transactions, on one end of the supply chain or the other.”
With a U.S. tax system based on global income, it may make sense for a company — transforming from predominantly domestic to global — to keep earnings offshore to reinvest in new growth for foreign jurisdiction subsidiaries, as opposed to taking U.S.-sourced capital and committing it to offshore operations, he says. However, you must have an economic or legal justification to organize your business that way, as solely tax-motivated transactions are not available in today’s environment.
Smart Business spoke with Koutouras about businesses experiencing increasing growth globally and the potential tax problems.
When migrating capital offshore, why are bank debt covenants important?
When a company decides to go offshore, setting up operations or buying facilities, the first question is not what does that do from a tax perspective, but what are the restrictions on your bank covenants? Lenders may place restrictions on a company’s ability to use lent funds offshore, recognizing the difficulty associated with returning that capital to the U.S.
Review your bank’s financing restrictions. If they limit your ability to migrate cash or capital, determine if you can re-negotiate some of the bank notes, which is not always easy. A company may need to replace certain financing with other debt financing — it’s not a matter to be taken lightly.
Ultimately, whenever sending capital offshore, businesses and their advisers need to understand the intended end result. Do they need to repatriate it at some point to service debt, or do they intend to keep that cash offshore indefinitely to finance offshore growth? The answers will influence the structure that is created from the outset.
How seriously should a company consider local financing options?
If a company migrates some activities offshore, you might need to obtain local financing to expand operations. However, certain jurisdictions, particularly in Europe, are experiencing a credit crisis and, as a result, bank financing is not readily available. Without local financing, question whether there is any ability to service U.S. bank debt, or will you need a mechanism for intercompany financing? Often cash-rich companies use intercompany loans to more freely transfer extra cash between jurisdictions.
But an inevitable hurdle with related-party transactions is the need for a secondary analysis to ensure those transactions are at arms length. Otherwise, the jurisdictions involved, such as the U.S. and Ireland, may attempt to re-characterize or re-price payments to be more consistent with market turns, creating some unanticipated tax consequences.
What intellectual property (IP) will you need within a foreign region?
IP is a relatively broad category of assets that not only consists of patents and trademarks but can also include know-how and processes, and companies should match the commercialization of IP with the development of the IP.
Often businesses take U.S.-developed IP and parse it up among various global commercial centers. However, if IP is being sold in Europe, there may be a need to manipulate or develop that IP in a European-centric way. Companies should identify centers of activity for offshore endeavors, including the development of IP. Areas, such as Ireland for Europe and Singapore for Asia, have a skilled work force, good technology infrastructure for research and development, and a relatively low tax rate when compared to the U.S.
IP is an area where the U.S. is vigilant about establishing policies to restrict companies’ ability to migrate assets offshore, so outright sales of IP offshore aren’t without their accompanying tax costs. Often, property, including IP, in its earliest stages of development and/or recently purchased is the easiest to convey offshore without the inclusion of taxes. To the extent IP and other U.S.-owned assets are needed offshore, consider both sides of related-party pricing to avoid unsupportable accumulations of income or loss in the relevant jurisdictions.
How should you quantify the support needed from domestic management, sales force, technical help or home office systems?
The cost for headquarter-support services needs to be chargebacked by the offshore entity. Companies that aren’t charging for management services and/or systems that go offshore are vulnerable. For example, the U.S. might assert that the foreign entity should be paying more back to the U.S. for the use of the U.S.-based management, thereby creating more potential U.S. tax income. This is something that needs to be reviewed periodically; the management chargebacks existing today might not be the chargebacks needed in a year’s time.
What tax considerations are important for how you sell goods within a region?
Pay attention to how your company conducts sales within the jurisdiction. Sending your domestic sales force into a foreign country will extend the taxable presence to that other jurisdiction. To avoid that, a company can compartmentalize sales by setting up a separate company or using a third-party, such as distributors, already within the country’s marketplace. Another mitigation is to avoid signing sales contracts within market and thereby creating a taxable presence. Ideally, in such cases, all sales are negotiated and executed remotely, and the salesperson is merely demonstrating the product with no authority to sell on behalf of company.
Also, when selling inventory, the placement of property within a jurisdiction could create a taxable presence. The U.S. will tax the income, and the foreign jurisdiction may assert tax liability for sales within its borders, creating the possibility that the same dollar could be taxed twice.
George Koutouras is a partner, international and transaction tax, at Moss Adams. Reach him at (415) 677-8212 or [email protected].
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