Business

Supreme Court upholds a tax on corporate wealth held overseas

Published

2 years ago

June 21, 2024

Supreme Court upholds a tax on corporate wealth held overseas

WASHINGTON —

The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to put new limits on Congress’ power to tax wealth that is not paid out in annual dividends.

In a setback for anti-tax conservatives, the justices upheld a provision of a 2017 tax law that imposed a one-time levy on the profits of foreign corporations whose shares were owned by Americans.

In a 7-2 decision, the justices said Congress has the power to tax corporate shareholders based on the company’s “undistributed income.”

“This court has long upheld taxes of that kind, and we do the same today,” said Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh for the court.

The case came to the court as a test of whether the conservative majority would put constitutional limits on “wealth taxes.”
Instead, the justices upheld an income tax that is not based on annual dividends.

While the decision upheld a Trump-era tax, progressives and tax experts cheered the ruling.

“Today’s decision will allow Congress to continue to exercise its power to tax income to fund the government and to make sure that all taxpayers — including multinational corporations and wealthy taxpayers — pay their fair share,” said Chye-Ching Huang, executive director of the Tax Law Center at NYU Law.

Alexandra Thornton of the Center for American Progress said the ruling “means that wealthy people attempting to avoid taxes by offshoring their money have to pay their fair share, just like every other American. The court’s decision avoids an outcome that would have thrown the American tax system into disarray and put at risk other forms of taxation that raise billions of dollars in revenue.”

Some noted that the ruling was limited to an unusual tax provision.

“The court makes clear it is not opening the door to a wealth tax, which would still face constitutional problems as a tax on property,” said Joe Bishop-Henchman of the National Taxpayers Union.

Thursday’s decision did not resolve a persistent dispute over whether the Constitution’s approval of income taxes includes taxing shares of corporate stock, or instead is limited to “realized” gains, such as wages, stock sales and stock dividends.

“So the precise and narrow question that the court addresses today is whether Congress may attribute an entity’s realized and undistributed income to the entity’s shareholders or partners, and then tax the shareholders or partners on their portions of that income,” Kavanaugh wrote for the majority. “This court’s longstanding precedents, reflected in and reinforced by Congress’s longstanding practice, establish that the answer is yes.”

Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch dissented.

Thomas wrote that the 16th Amendment says income is “only income realized by the taxpayer. The text and history of the amendment make clear that it requires a distinction between ‘income’ and the ‘source’ from which that income is ‘derived.’ And, the only way to draw such a distinction is with a realization requirement.”

Some conservatives fear that a future Congress led by progressive Democrats would impose taxes on accumulated wealth.

They urged the court to hear the case of Moore vs. United States and to rule that Congress may not impose a tax on “property or wealth.”

At issue in the case was the meaning of the 16th Amendment, ratified in 1913. It says Congress has the power to “lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived.”

A few years later, the Supreme Court said corporate shares held by taxpayers could not be taxed as income unless they were “realized or received” as income. That decision was generally understood to mean that the government may impose taxes on wages or stock dividends, but not necessarily on property or corporate wealth that grows in value. These are referred to as “unrealized gains.”

But many constitutional scholars and tax experts had questioned that interpretation of the 16th Amendment. And in recent decades, Congress has imposed taxes on individuals who are earning income in partnerships and have ownership shares in some corporations, even if dividends are not paid out each year.

The case of Charles and Kathleen Moore began when they received a $14,729 tax bill for their ownership shares of a company based in India.

The Moores, who are retired and live in Washington state, said they received no income or dividends from their investment in the company, which supplies equipment to small farmers. They sued, alleging the tax was unconstitutional under the 16th Amendment.

But a federal judge and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed with them and upheld part of the 2017 tax bill passed by the Republican-controlled Congress and signed by President Trump. It imposed a one-time tax on Americans who owned shares in foreign corporations that gained in value. The tax measure included large tax breaks for the wealthy, but to offset those losses in tax revenue, lawmakers sought to recoup some profits that Americans held abroad.

With the backing of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups, the Moores petitioned the court with the help of Washington attorney David B. Rivkin and urged the justices to strike down the tax on overseas profits.

Some had called for Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. to recuse himself from the matter.

Rivkin who helped write the appeal petition, interviewed Alito for two articles that appeared in the Wall Street Journal last year.

“There was no valid reason for my recusal in this case,” Alito wrote in response in September. “When Mr. Rivkin participated in the interviews and co-authored the articles, he did so as a journalist, not an advocate. The case in which he is involved was never mentioned; nor did we discuss any issue in that case either directly or indirectly.”

Alito concurred in the outcome Thursday.

Business

California gas is pricey already. The Iran war could cost you even more

Published

5 hours ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

California gas is pricey already. The Iran war could cost you even more

The U.S. attack on Iran is expected to have an unwelcome impact on California drivers — a jump in gas prices that could be felt at the pump in a week or two.

The outbreak of war in the Middle East, which virtually closed a key Persian Gulf shipping lane, spiked the price of a barrel of Brent crude oil by as much as $10, with prices rising as high as $82.37 on Monday before settling down.

The price of the international standard dictates what motorists pay for gas globally, including in California, with every dollar increase translating to 2.5 cents at the pump, said Severin Borenstein, faculty director of the Energy Institute at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

That would mean drivers could pay at least 20 cents more per gallon, though how much damage the conflict will do to wallets remains to be seen.

“The real issue though is the oil markets are just guessing right now at what is going to happen. It’s a time of extreme volatility,” Borenstein said. “We don’t know whether the war will widen or end quickly, and all of those things will drive the price of crude.”

President Trump has lauded the reduction of nationwide gas prices as a validation of his economic agenda despite worries about a weak job market and concerns of persistent inflation.

The upheaval in the Middle East could be more acutely felt in the state.

Californians already pay far more for gas than the rest of the country, with the average cost of a gallon of regular at $4.66, up 3 cents from a week ago and 30 cents from a month ago, according to AAA. The current nationwide average is about $3 per gallon.

The disruption in international crude markets also comes as refiners are switching to producing California’s summer-blend gas, which is less volatile during the state’s hot summers. The switch can drive up the price of a gallon of gas at least 15 cents.

The prices in California are largely driven by higher taxes and a cleaner, less polluting blend required year-round by regulators to combat pollution — and it’s long been a hot-button issue.

The politics were only exacerbated by recent refinery closures, including the Phillips 66 refinery in Wilmington in October and the idling and planned closure of the Valero refinery in Benicia, Calif., which reduced refining capacity in the state by about 18%.

California also has seen a steady reduction in its crude oil production, making it more reliant on international imports of oil and gasoline.

In 2024, only 23.3% of the crude oil refined in the state was pumped in California, with 13% from Alaska and 63% from elsewhere in the world, including about 30% from the Middle East, said Jim Stanley, a spokesperson for the Western States Petroleum Assn.

“We could see a supply crunch and real price volatility” if the Middle East supply is interrupted, he said.

The Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, through which about 20% of the world’s oil passes, was virtually closed Monday, according to reports. Though it produces only about 3% of global oil, Iran has considerable sway over energy markets because it controls the strait.

Also, in response to the U.S. attack, Iran has fired a barrage of missiles at neighboring Persian Gulf states. Saudi Arabia said it intercepted Iranian drones targeting one of its refinery complexes.

California Republicans and the California Fuels & Convenience Alliance, a trade group representing fuel marketers, gas station owners and others, have blamed Gov. Gavin Newsom’s policies for driving up the price of gas.

A landmark climate change law calls for California to become carbon neutral by 2045, and Newsom told regulators in 2021 to stop issuing fracking permits and to phase out oil extraction by 2045. He also signed a bill allowing local governments to block construction of oil and gas wells.

However, last year Newsom changed his stance and signed a bill that will allow up to 2,000 new oil wells per year through 2036 in Kern County despite legal challenges by environmental groups. The county produces about three-fourths of the state’s crude oil.

Borenstein said he didn’t expect that the new state oil production would do much to lower gas prices because it is only marginally cheaper than oil imported by ocean tankers.

Stanley said the aim of the law was to support the Kern County oil industry, which was facing pipeline closures without additional supplies to ship to state refineries.

Statewide, the industry supports more than 535,000 jobs, $166 billion in economic activity and $48 billion in local and state taxes, according to a report last year by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

Bloomberg News and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Business

Block to cut more than 4,000 jobs amid AI disruption of the workplace

Published

17 hours ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

Block to cut more than 4,000 jobs amid AI disruption of the workplace

Fintech company Block said Thursday that it’s cutting more than 4,000 workers or nearly half of its workforce as artificial intelligence disrupts the way people work.

The Oakland parent company of payment services Square and Cash App saw its stock surge by more than 23% in after-hours trading after making the layoff announcement.

Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and head of Block, said in a post on social media site X that the company didn’t make the decision because the company is in financial trouble.

“We’re already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company,” he said.

Block is the latest tech company to announce massive cuts as employers push workers to use more AI tools to do more with fewer people. Amazon in January said it was laying off 16,000 people as part of effort to remove layers within the company.

Block has laid off workers in previous years. In 2025, Block said it planned to slash 931 jobs, or 8% of its workforce, citing performance and strategic issues but Dorsey said at the time that the company wasn’t trying to replace workers with AI.

As tech companies embrace AI tools that can code, generate text and do other tasks, worker anxiety about whether their jobs will be automated have heightened.

In his note to employees Dorsey said that he was weighing whether to make cuts gradually throughout months or years but chose to act immediately.

“Repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead,” he told workers. “I’d rather take a hard, clear action now and build from a position we believe in than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome.”

Dorsey is also the co-founder of Twitter, which was later renamed to X after billionaire Elon Musk purchased the company in 2022.

As of December, Block had 10,205 full-time employees globally, according to the company’s annual report. The company said it plans to reduce its workforce by the end of the second quarter of fiscal year 2026.

The company’s gross profit in 2025 reached more than $10 billion, up 17% compared to the previous year.

Dorsey said he plans to address employees in a live video session and noted that their emails and Slack will remain open until Thursday evening so they can say goodbye to colleagues.

“I know doing it this way might feel awkward,” he said. “I’d rather it feel awkward and human than efficient and cold.”

Business

WGA cancels Los Angeles awards show amid labor strike

Published

1 day ago

March 1, 2026

Press Room

WGA cancels Los Angeles awards show amid labor strike

The Writers Guild of America West has canceled its awards ceremony scheduled to take place March 8 as its staff union members continue to strike, demanding higher pay and protections against artificial intelligence.

In a letter sent to members on Sunday, WGA West’s board of directors, including President Michele Mulroney, wrote, “The non-supervisory staff of the WGAW are currently on strike and the Guild would not ask our members or guests to cross a picket line to attend the awards show. The WGAW staff have a right to strike and our exceptional nominees and honorees deserve an uncomplicated celebration of their achievements.”

The New York ceremony, scheduled on the same day, is expected go forward while an alternative celebration for Los Angeles-based nominees will take place at a later date, according to the letter.

Comedian and actor Atsuko Okatsuka was set to host the L.A. show, while filmmaker James Cameron was to receive the WGA West Laurel Award.

WGA union staffers have been striking outside the guild’s Los Angeles headquarters on Fairfax Avenue since Feb. 17. The union alleged that management did not intend to reach an agreement on the pending contract. Further, it claimed that guild management had “surveilled workers for union activity, terminated union supporters, and engaged in bad faith surface bargaining.”

On Tuesday, the labor organization said that management had raised the specter of canceling the ceremony during a call about contraction negotiations.

“Make no mistake: this is an attempt by WGAW management to drive a wedge between WGSU and WGA membership when we should be building unity ahead of MBA [Minimum Basic Agreement] negotiations with the AMPTP [Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers],” wrote the staff union. “We urge Guild management to end this strike now,” the union wrote on Instagram.

The union, made up of more than 100 employees who work in areas including legal, communications and residuals, was formed last spring and first authorized a strike in January with 82% of its members. Contract negotiations, which began in September, have focused on the use of artificial intelligence, pay raises and “basic protections” including grievance procedures.

The WGA has said that it offered “comprehensive proposals with numerous union protections and improvements to compensation and benefits.”

The ceremony’s cancellation, coming just weeks before the Academy Awards, casts a shadow over the upcoming contraction negotiations between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the studios and streamers.

In 2023, the WGA went on a strike lasting 148 days, the second-longest strike in the union’s history.

Times staff writer Cerys Davies contributed to this report.