NU Online News Service

WASHINGTON--Property and casualty insurance industry sources said they believe a revenue-hungry Congress will finally decide to impose higher taxes on offshore-based insurers.

The companies that would be targeted are those who cede a large portion of their U.S. premiums to their parent companies.

Both the domestic and offshore insurers said fierce lobbying efforts can be expected at the House Ways and Means Committee, where Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., is pushing a bill (H.R. 2434) to deny deductions for reinsurance premiums in excess of the industry average ceded to unaffiliated third parties for each insurance line of business.

Rep. Neal did not respond to requests for an interview.

Brad Kading, president of the Association of Bermuda Insurers and Reinsurers, said his group and other foreign-based insurers believe Congress will be pushing to add the Neal bill provisions as a measure that will generate revenue "to any moving tax legislation."

He said he expects that the issue will be decided between now and when Congress departs for its summer recess in early August.

W.R. Berkley, chairman and CEO of the Berkley Companies, Greenwich, Conn., in the forefront of the move to add levies to offshore insurers confirmed that domestic companies are pushing for imposition of the tax.

"We will seek to have the Neal bill passed as soon as we are able to," he said.

"It is easy revenue, and it is revenue that comes about without any harm to the domestic economy or domestic companies," he said. "All we're dealing with is direct revenue paid in the U.S.," said Berkley. "Either pay the tax on it or declare yourself a domestic company."

Berkley contended that this "is a very narrow issue."

Kading, citing a study done for his consortium by the Brattle Group, said the added tax will be "bad for consumers. It would lead to $10-to-$12 billion in higher consumer insurance prices every year because it reduces the supply of reinsurance to the U.S. market by 20 percent."

Alex Kaplan, a vice president of government affairs at Swiss Re, and Michael Natal, a vice president for taxes at Swiss Re, argue otherwise.

"The proponents of the bill claim that it is a mechanism to prevent the shifting of profits to low or no tax jurisdictions," they said.

"This is a fallacy--the bill is discriminatory and would target all countries regardless of each region's tax rate."

Moreover, they add, "it is risk--not profit--that is shifted offshore."

"A single catastrophe can quickly turn an expected profit into an actual loss, resulting in the foreign affiliate taking the hit when loss claims are ultimately paid to U.S. insureds," they added.

Berkley argues that Swiss Re is affected "in only a modest way."

He said the U.S. represents 48 percent of all the world's property and casualty premiums.

"What Swiss Re has done is set capital in other places, but they have to obviously write the business where the marketplace is. They write the business here and move the revenue offshore," he said.

According to Kading, the three bills that are likely vehicles for a provision adding the additional tax are legislation extending business taxes that expired as of Dec. 31; legislation restoring the estate tax; and legislation hoping to provide funds to create new domestic jobs.

"We don't have knowledge as to what they are doing, but we believe that is what they are trying to do," he said. "We are going to be vigilant. This is the fourth year in a row the domestic insurers have lobbied for this, and what is in their favor is that Congress is desperate for revenue."

The foreign insurers and reinsurers are using a paper written by Gary Clyde Hufbauer for the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington, D.C., to argue that, "If the Neal bill...is enacted, European countries are almost certain to bring a case against the United States in the WTO [World Trade Organization] and seek whatever redress they can under U.S. income tax treaties." Hufbauer further said that some foreign countries might consider tit-for-tat retaliatory legislation that would hurt U.S.-owned insurance companies."

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