Congressional movement on tax reform is unlikely this year absent a concerted and unified effort by the business community, executives and former lawmakers said on a keynote panel Feb. 25 at a conference sponsored by the Tax Council Policy Institute.

“If you’re going to do anything you’re going to have to get the CEOs of your companies in the [Capitol] building, in the offices,” former Sen. John Breaux, now of the Breaux Lott Leadership Group, said. “It’s going to take CEO involvement to get this train moving.” Breaux and other panelists said corporations need to be vigilant about tax actions in the nation’s dire revenue situation—particularly President Obama’s international proposals for the fiscal year 2011 budget—at the same time they noted the tax-writing committees have said those proposals should be looked at in the context of reform.

For example, they said, a highly controversial provision to stop the shifting of certain intangibles out of the United States to low-tax jurisdictions is unlikely to happen in the short term. Corporate executives on the panel attacked the provision, which would create a new Subpart F category for “excessive returns” on income from intangibles shifted out of the United States to related controlled foreign corporations subject to a low effective tax rate.

Timothy McDonald, vice president, finance and accounting, global taxes, Procter & Gamble, said “as a matter of principle, this thing’s got to go,” and said “I think we’ll do everything we can do to make sure this is a footnote, never actually done.” He called the proposal “tragically flawed,” and said that while there are “probably cases out there that are egregious, go after them.” McDonald said it is overreaching to create a test based on returns on income, and said the arm’s-length principle under tax code Section 482 is the only test that should be used.