Another Proposed Law to Stem Outsourcing Overseas
Sen. Schumer is proposing a law that would tax companies for offshoring call center operations.
Legislators are looking for new ways to stop U.S. companies from outsourcing work overseas. Last week I wrote about the provisions in the Jobs Act to close tax loopholes for companies that ship jobs overseas (see the blog here). This week, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) introduced legislation that calls for taxing companies that transfer domestic customer service calls to foreign call centers. In a prepared statement, Schumer said the $0.25 excise tax is designed to provide incentive for companies to keep call center jobs on American soil.
"If we want to put a stop to the outsourcing of American jobs, than we need to provide incentives for American companies to keep American jobs here," he said. "This bill will not only serve to maintain call center jobs currently in the United States, but also provide a reason for companies that have already outsourced jobs to bring them back."
Not only would companies be taxed for transferring domestic service calls to foreign call centers, they’d have to own up to such transfers, too. Under the proposed law, if a caller dials an 800 number that lands in India, the call center has to notify the caller that his or her call had been rerouted to India.
The disclosure requirement also requires that companies annually certify to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that they are complying with this requirement. Companies that fail to certify they are fully disclosing call transfers would be subject to civil penalties that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) would prescribe.
Just as there has been with the Jobs Act, there’s no shortage of folks who believe Schumer’s bill won’t have its intended impact. In an article in The Hill, TollFreeForwarding.com CEO Travis May said the tax could ultimately be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. He also said it could prompt U.S. companies to altogether move their operations offshore.In this article, an economist predicts the excise tax as proposed in Schumer’s bill will incur new taxes imposed on American goods sold offshore. "The Senator’s intent is certainly laudable—we all want to promote job creation in the United States," Kent Gardner, an economist with the Center for Governmental Research in Rochester, told 13 WHAM, a Rochester, N.Y. news station. "But we have to be careful that we stick with policies that promote fair trade and not give into the temptation to be protectionist. As we learned during the Great Depression, protectionism only works temporarily. If we want to tax sales to call centers in, say, Chennai or Mumbai in India, then we have to expect the Indians to tax sales of Kodak digital technology or Harris RF Communications equipment to India. Eventually we all lose."
What do you think? Might Schumer’s bill curb companies’ appetite for offshoring call centers? Or might it turn around and bite us in our proverbial wallet?Most Discussed Posts
Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most significant game changers to hit the technology landscape in the past 20 years. With this massive expansion of the cloud, the perception of the IT organization is shifting from a utility player to a change agent. This eBook breaks down five ways progressive organizations are using cloud-based IT Management solutions to help drive innovation and become more strategic, including: adding visibility and analytics, speeding up time-to-value, lowering costs, improving prioritization, and providing a blueprint for future cloud deployments.
Read the white paper to see how IBM helped Citigroup deliver new services and enhancements to their 200 million customers faster.
There are 3 ways to modernize legacy applications: rewrite completely, acquire packaged solutions or migrate existing code. This paper explains why it's best to migrate and how IBM® Rational® software can help.
Accommodating specific lines of business can result in a hybrid ecosystem of applications and servers. The resulting complexity of this architecture makes for an environment that is costly to maintain and difficult to change when addressing new challenges.
This whitepaper will help you to define a mobile device passcode policy. Security managers must attempt to reconcile two opposing goals. They must: 1) create a passcode policy that is strong enough to protect the device if it is lost or stolen, while: 2) not annoying users with needless length or complexity.
This whitepaper, authored by The Radicati Group, looks at the key reasons organizations should consider moving to a cloud-based archiving solution. Email archiving solutions enable organizations to store, monitor, and collect electronic data exchanged by their users to comply with internal policies and regulations.
ATERNITY will showcase a 30-minute demo on how Fortune 500 companies are leveraging its award-winning FPI Platform to deliver a user-centric approach to Proactive IT Management.
For businesses to move forward and tap into the ever-expanding universe of Internet users and network-enabled devices, it's critical to learn how to make the transition to IPv6. Learn the critical steps your organization must take to make a seamless transition-and keep your business world connected.
Learn how IT teams can protect against spear phishing tactics. Harry Sverdlove, chief technology officer of Bit9 offers a frank discussion about spear phishing - the most common technique used in today's advanced attacks.
Learn how to build a solid business case for your migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux so you can run leaner, innovate faster, be more flexible and own the New Now.
Social media isn't about you; it's about everything around you. As you consider how your customers want to communicate with you, social media is something that can't be ignored. But what should your strategy be? Is social media "just another channel?" What kind of a plan makes sense for your contact center and for your customers? Join our experts as they share their insight and research results.
Hardware tokens were a popular method of strong authentication in past years but the cumbersome provisioning and distribution tasks, high support requirements and replacement costs have limited their growth. The additional log-in steps that hardware tokens require and the resulting user frustrations have limited adoption and make them impractical for larger scale partner and customer applications.
Sponsored Links
