Congress
Republican tax law leaves experts searching for words
As the tax world pores over Republicans’ tax cuts, one question keeps coming up: What are we calling this?
In a town that loves clever acronyms, tax pros are struggling to figure out how to talk about the new law, beginning with its name. The official title, at least before Democrats had it deleted from the legislation, is a mouthful: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. And it’s a bit awkward with the word “act” following “bill.”
But there’s no consensus on what else to call it.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent likes “O Triple B.” Others are going with “OBBB” or “TOBBB” or “OBBBA” or “BBB.” “OB3” has been getting some traction, which bugs Libin Zhang, a tax lawyer at Fried Frank.
“’OB3’ is a bit misleading because the 3 should come before the B, like ‘O3B’,” he says. Zhang likes “OB-cubed.”
It’s not just the title that has experts tongue tied.
The legislation has an alphabet soup of provisions that are also scrambling the tax lexicon, simultaneously adding new terms and acronyms while deleting others — including GILTI, perhaps the most well-known piece of jargon to emerge from Republicans’ original 2017 tax cuts.
The Global Intangible Low-Taxed Income tax is a special levy Republicans imposed on business profits parked in overseas tax havens, and the acronym left little doubt about the dim view lawmakers took of the tactics.
But GILTI is being scotched by the new law, replaced by “Net CFC Tested Income” (NCTI) — which now has some test driving possible nicknames, including “necktie” and “neck tee.”
Others say they are sticking with GILTI regardless.
“The name GILTI is gone, although I think many of us will continue to refer to it as GILTI,” said EY’s Jason Yen, in a recent webinar on the legislation.
The struggle for words comes as experts try to wrap their heads around the legislation, signed into law a little more than two weeks ago. Much of the law was written in secret and didn’t get a lot of public vetting before passage, so the tax world is simultaneously trying to figure out what the bill does as well as what to call it.
The provision with the catchiest nickname — the “revenge tax,” a moniker some Republicans tax aides hated — didn’t make it into the final legislation. Lawmakers dropped that levy, designed to punish countries that implement a framework for taxing big multinational companies, after Bessent said it was no longer necessary, citing his negotiations with G7 nations that are part of the global pact.
At the same time, it remains to be seen whether Republicans’ decision to dub their new savings accounts for children “Trump accounts” will prove a marketing misstep that will blunt its appeal to the 75 million Americans who voted for Kamala Harris.
The overall legislation was christened by Trump, but the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” was scrubbed from the legislation once it got to the Senate, after Democratic leader Chuck Schumer had it struck as a violation of the chamber’s internal rules — the latest shot in a long-running feud in which the two parties take turns deleting the names of each other’s reconciliation bills.
“I just forced Republicans to delete their ridiculous bill name,” Schumer wrote shortly thereafter on X. “Nothing about this bill is beautiful.”
Technically the legislation is now called “An act to provide for reconciliation pursuant to title II of H. Con. Res. 14.”
Of course, that isn’t stopping many from still using the now-unofficial name. “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” was the winner in a recent EY survey of 10,000 tax pros asking how they referred to the tax law. “OB3” came in a close second. A similar survey by Grant Thornton also had those names going one-two.
Over at the Tax Policy Center, senior fellow Howard Gleckman prefers the colloquial “2025 budget act” or, simply, “the big budget bill.” The studiously nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, meanwhile, uses the extremely neutral “H.R. 1.”
Some of the individual provisions have been renamed to reflect substantive changes made by the legislation.
“GILTI” was made obsolete by Senate Republicans’ revisions to how multinationals will be taxed.
The original tax was intended to target profits from things like patents that businesses squirreled away in tax havens. Republicans had trouble coming up with a way of legally defining those earnings, so in the 2017 law they essentially said GILTI was everything except profits resulting from tangible assets like factories.
The idea was to distinguish between the money companies made from their actual operations abroad from things that were just accounting maneuvers. Naturally, the tangible stuff got its own acronym — QBAI, or Qualified Business Asset Investment.
But the new law dumps QBAI, and so the distinction made by GILTI no longer matters, leaving the tax world with “Net CFC Tested Income.”
Something similar is happening with FDII, or Foreign Derived Intangible Income, another provision that originated in 2017.
It’s a deduction for companies with overseas profits from intellectual property held in the U.S. — although it’s probably best known for inspiring a years-long dispute about whether it should be called “Fiddy” or “F-D-I-I.”
QBAI was part of the calculations that went into FDII, so, with QBAI now going away, FDII is also renamed in the new law, as the Foreign Derived Deduction Eligible Income, or FDDEI.
But if anything, it’s even less clear how to shorthand that.
Warren Payne, a former Republican tax aide now at the firm Mayer Brown, says he’s heard it called “Fa-Day” — though he’s not going there.
“I haven’t figured out how to pronounce it,” he said. “I just spell it out.”
The chair of the House Agriculture Committee said he’s not willing to “accept bad results” as a tradeoff for the benefits of advancements in artificial intelligence — a direct rebuttal to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
“As someone who practiced health care for 28 years, I’m never willing to accept bad results. I think we just need to do our best,” Rep. G.T. Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican, told reporters Monday.
He was responding to Altman’s comments to Decoded by Blue Light News that people “should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency.”
Pressed further on whether he agreed with Altman’s premise, Thompson replied, “No, I think we have to work harder to prevent any bad things from happening.”
Altman’s comments come in the wake of increased panic over the risks of catastrophic destruction from AI, with many industry leaders and experts arguing that guardrails are needed on the technology to prevent it from spinning out of human control.
Pressure is building on Congress to regulate the rapidly-advancing technology, but lawmakers are divided over whether the AI industry needs federal regulation or if it’s capable of governing itself.
The executives of major AI labs and tech companies gathered at the White House last week to discuss solutions with President Donald Trump, who believes overregulating AI will have national security repercussions. The group ended up signing a “morally binding” AI accord that critics say won’t do enough to prevent a worst-case scenario.
Thompson noted Monday he believes that AI will bring “tremendous solutions,” specifically in regards to finding cures for health issues like cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. But he also said AI has to be led with “principle” — comparing it to how he addressed digital assets in a bill to regulate the cryptocurrency industry, which he worked on as chair of the Agriculture Committee.
“The first principle is ‘do no harm.’ So we need to protect consumers, and that means, I think, building some guardrails — some guidelines — to do that,” Thompson said. He added that the second principle is to “foster innovation.”
“I think AI has a lot to do with that,” he added. “I don’t think AI works without RI: Real Intelligence.”
LE SUEUR, Minnesota — Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday there is no “consensus” yet on advancing a bill establishing permanent daylight saving time even as President Donald Trump ramps up pressure on Republicans to pass it.
Thune addressed the matter in a Monday interview after Trump used his Truth Social account multiple times over the weekend to rail against the legislation, known as the Sunshine Protection Act — going so far as to post the personal cell phone number of one of its GOP opponents, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas.
“The president feels strongly on it like he does a lot of issues,” he said. “It’s something we’re having conversations about but there’s no clear path forward or consensus on it yet.”
While Trump singled out Cotton for scrutiny, Thune made clear the opposition to the permanent daylight saving time proposal — which would lead to very late winter sunrises in some parts of the country — ran deeper than one senator.
Cotton has publicly voiced opposition to the proposal for year, citing, among other things, the fact that children in his state would be going to school in the dark for part of the year.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) voiced similar objections Monday to reporters in the Capitol, saying he was mindful of “safety concerns in the more northern and rural states where children get on the school bus in very early hours.”
Thune, who spoke during a campaign swing in Minnesota with GOP Senate nominee Michele Tafoya, has himself opposed previous daylight saving bills. He said Monday that “a lot of it depends on where you are in the country” and that “your geography probably has as much to do with your position on that as anything.”
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who has aligned himself closely with Trump, is among the lawmakers who have been pushing to get the bill through the Senate. He recently told POLITICO, “I’m going to make sure it gets passed this year.”
Riley Rogerson contributed to this report.
Democrats have pulled back some of their ads in North Carolina’s Senate race, days after the top Senate Republican super PAC paused its future spending in the state.
WinSenate, a group affiliated with the Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC, has removed roughly $1.1 million in North Carolina ad buys this week, according to ad tracking firm AdImpact. The group still has roughly $18.8 million in future reservations through Election Day.
“Senate Majority PAC is committed to seeing this race through to victory, and will continue to make spending decisions based on how to best build a strong Senate majority,” Senate Majority PAC spokesperson Lauren French said in a statement.
The move, combined with the GOP-aligned Senate Leadership Fund’s decision to pause future spending, are a signal that both parties are shifting resources amid an ever-expanding Senate map. Democrats are increasingly confident in their North Carolina Senate nominee, Roy Cooper, as he continues to hold a sizable lead in public polling over Republican Michael Whatley — but some privately say states like Michigan and New Hampshire need more resources.
Meanwhile, multiple Republican groups, not just SLF, have retreated from the state in recent weeks, effectively deciding that it’s no longer worth the money to boost Whatley’s campaign.
The Koch-aligned Americans for Prosperity Action left North Carolina off its $22 million list of future spending across key Senate contests, and Old North Action removed $6.5 million in ad reservations last month.
The Cooper campaign, however, is still treating the race as competitive, pointing to North Carolina’s closely divided electorate and the fact that President Donald Trump won the state in each of the past three presidential elections.
“North Carolina is a truly 50/50 state and Democrats haven’t won a US Senate race in 18 years. We can’t take anything for granted or our eye off the ball,” said Morgan Jackson, a senior adviser to the Cooper campaign. “DC is broken and we’re going to continue to run this race like we’re ten points down to ensure North Carolinians get the change they desperately need.”
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