American legislators are searching for tools to garner more corporate tax revenue and have a slew of measures before them seeking to curb corporate inversions.

Surprisingly, while US corporations have been choosing European countries as new homes, a couple of the initiatives have specifically targeted Bermuda as a jurisdictional threat.

The US House of Representatives have passed two measures within the last month that contain clauses that specifically prohibits funding to any Bermuda-domiciled company, previously domiciled in the US.

Both bills have been sent to the Senate.

They include House Resolution 4745 — Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2015, a bill brought by Rep Tom Latham, (Republican) enabling the budgets for the listed programmes.

However, buried in the bill in section 434, is House Amendment 840 which “prohibits the use of funds made available by this Act to contract with any incorporated entity whose sealed bid or competitive proposal shows that the entity is incorporated or chartered in Bermuda or the Cayman Islands, if the sealed bid or competitive proposal also shows that the entity was previously incorporated in the United States”.

Subsequently, the bill has been received in the Senate, read twice and placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar.

Bermuda had the same treatment from HR 4870 — Department of Defence Appropriations Act, 2015 sponsored by Rep Rodney Frelinghuysen, (Republican). It too, passed the House proposing the same prohibition in an obscure section 10007.

The House of Representatives has referred to its Ways and Means Committee HR 4679 — Stop Corporate Inversions Act of 2014, a bill sponsored by Rep Sander Levin (Democrat) in May.

Another bill seeking to address the issue of corporate inversions has also been referred to the Ways & Means Committee. HR 4985 — Stop Corporate Expatriation and Invest in America’s Infrastructure Act of 2014 was proposed to modify the rules relating to inverted corporations and to transfer the resulting revenues to the Highway Trust Fund.

Senator Carl Levin (Democrat) introduced in the US Senate in May a related bill entitled S 2360 — Stop Corporate Inversions Act of 2014, which is before the Senate Finance Committee.

Also sent to the Finance Committee was another related bill S 2489 — American Jobs for American Infrastructure Act.