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 Though tax treaties previously have routinely won Senate approval,
they have recently fallen victim to partisan gridlock despite a
corporate lobbying effort to get them ratified.
Treaties with Chile, Hungary, Switzerland, Luxembourg and the
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development are pending
before the Senate, Mark Mazur, assistant secretary for tax policy at
the U.S. Treasury Department, told a conference.
The United States has tax treaties with more than 60 countries,
ranging from China to Kyrgyzstan. Their main purpose is to prevent
double-taxation of income and profits.
Mazur urged senators to vote on the pending treaties as a way to
boost U.S. economic growth.
"The Senate has gone three years without ratifying any tax
treaties," he said. "This backlog is really starting to cause
problems. It makes it harder for us to negotiate subsequent ones
when you already have a bunch in the queue."
The Treasury has negotiated treaties with Poland, Spain and Japan
that it expects to send to the Senate soon, Mazur said.
The tax treaties have been prevented from coming to a vote in the
Senate by Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a favorite of
the conservative Tea Party movement.
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Citing privacy concerns about Americans' tax data, Paul has
single-handedly blocked Senate action on the treaties. Under Senate
rules, one senator can prevent a motion from reaching a vote on the
chamber's floor.
A spokeswoman for Paul could not be immediately reached on Thursday.
On the sidelines of the conference, Mazur declined to answer
questions about Paul's hold on the treaties. "We keep pressing the
committees, their relevant staff and members," Mazur said.
(Reporting by Patrick Temple-West; editing by Kevin Drawbaugh)
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