The HIRE Act has been passed and signed into law by President Obama. The text is available here. The IRS has already put out a press release describing the two new benefits for hiring workers,IR-2010-033.
Similarly, Thomson-Reuters prepared a useful table on the various changes introduced by the bill, of which the most important may be the international tax provisions. The international provisions, many of which will not be fully in place for several years, include a registration requirement for foreign-targeted bonds (hopefully leading to the end of the portfolio bond market targeting non-US buyers but for which there were insufficient measures in place to ensure that US taxpayers weren't getting these bonds and avoiding tax on them because there was no proof about ownership); eventually, portfolio interest withholding if bonds are in unregistered form; treatment of substitute payments and dividend equivalent payments (i.e., payments made under equity swaps or lending of shares) as sourced the same way as direct dividends for withholding purposes; reporting by PFIC shareholders; withholding in certain cases on US accounts of foreign financial institutions (after 2012); new reporting for individuals with foreign assets; extension of the statute of limitations for understatements with respect to foreign assets (among other extensions); and increases in penalties, including a minimum $10,000 penalty for failure to report foreign assets and tightening of the rules for treatment of trusts. These international provisions could help limit offshore noncompliance and the ability of foreign financial institutions to assist US taxpayers in tax evasion (if, of course, they remain in place long enough to be applied, since there are multi-year delays for transitioning to several of the changes).
[edited to add IRS press release and information on bill provided by Thomson Reuters; hat tip to fellow tax prof Ted Seto for initial info on passage]
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