Brand New Anti-Offshore Bill: Politics or Progress?
A group of Democratic Senators have introduced a new bill aimed at creating jobs and deterring offshoring. Will it work?
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), has taken up his fight against offshoring with new legislation they say will create jobs here and discourage the practice of shipping jobs overseas.
Called the Creating American Jobs and Ending Offshoring Act, the bill (introduced last week) would give companies a break from paying payroll taxes by reducing the amount of Social Security taxes they would have to pay for newly hired employees who replace workers doing similar jobs overseas. The bill requires that the business certify the new hire is replacing an overseas worker, and the tax break would continue 24 months for employees hired during a three-year period starting today.
There are also discouragements for businesses that offshore. Under the legislation, businesses would be blocked from taking any deduction, loss or credit for costs related to reducing or ending U.S. operations while expanding similar operations outside of the United States. It would also change current tax laws that allow companies to defer paying U.S. tax on income earned overseas until the profits are brought back to the United States.
It’s being reported that Durbin and other Democrats plan to bring the bill, S.3816, up for a vote Tuesday. Durbin introduced the bill with 7 other fellow senators, including Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).
Durbin is no stranger to legislating against offshoring. He’s behind the H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act of 2009, which he introduced with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). That bill has been in committee since April 2009 and is expected to stay put through the remainder of the year (you can read more on that in this article, The Truth About the H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act of 2009).
Not everyone (surprise!) likes Durbin’s latest bill. Republicans are criticizing it, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is against it, saying it really won’t have much impact and could instead hurt the economy and lead to job cuts.
I think there are excellent points on both sides of the argument, and I believe this offshoring issue is one of the thorniest issues the U.S. IT market—and businesses at large--has had to deal with in years. There are so many layers of complexity. I think the readers here at CIO.com have some of the best insight, so let’s hear it!
Do you think this latest legislative proposal makes sense? Will it curb offshoring in ways that are positive to individual U.S. workers and the U.S. economy? Could it actually hurt the economy, as some predict? Or are the arguments for and against little more than political pandering during the hotly-contested march to mid-term elections?
Previous Post: ‘America’s Neighborhood Grocer’ Offshores IT to IndiaNext Post: Egypt Continues IT Outsourcing Push
What is Tech Briefcase?
TechBriefcase is a new, free service where IT Professionals can Search, Store and Share IT white papers and content like this. Learn more
Bookmark content
Speed up your research efforts with content across the web.
Search and Store
Find the white papers you need. Create folders for any topic.
View Anywhere
Open your briefcase on your iPhone, tablet or desktop. Share with colleagues.
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
