Obscure tax item in Trump’s ‘Big Bill’ stokes Wall Street angst

By Ye Xie and Liz Capo McCormick, Bloomberg

Buried deep in the more than 1,000-page tax-and-spending bill that President Donald Trump is muscling through Congress is an obscure tax measure that’s setting off alarms on Wall Street and beyond.

The item — introduced in legislation that passed the House last week as Section 899 and titled “Enforcement of Remedies Against Unfair Foreign Taxes” — calls for, among other things, increasing tax rates for individuals and companies from countries whose tax policies the US deems “discriminatory.” This includes raising tax rates on passive income, such as interest and dividends, earned by investors who are potentially sitting on trillions in American assets.

Cloaked in technicalities, the implication of the “revenge” measure, as it’s quickly becomin