Obama urges tax for transit work plan

US president Barack Obama’s budget will propose an ambitious six-year, $478bn (€422bn) public works programme of highway, bridge, and transit upgrades, half of it financed with a one-time mandatory tax on the profits that US companies have amassed overseas, White House officials said.

The proposal, one of the main components of the $4trn spending proposal for the 2016 budget year that Obama will send to Congress today, attempts to tap into bipartisan support for spending on badly needed infrastructure repairs and construction.

The tax on accumulated foreign profits, to be paid once, would be set at 14%, significantly lower than the current top corporate rate of 35%.