Last week, members of TechNet, including Goodwin Procter’s Gus Coldebella, met on Capitol Hill to engage in policy discussions with congressional leaders of both parties and both houses, representatives of various presidential candidates and administration officials. John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, John Chen, CEO of Sybase, and Rey Ramsey, CEO of TechNet, led the discussions, which focused on three issues important to the technology community:
Visa reform – America educates the world’s brightest science, technology, engineering and math students, but because of flaws in its current immigration policy, it often sends too many of them home after completing their education, rather than encouraging them to work at and start companies in the Unites States. According to TechNet, winning the “war for talent” requires us to staple a green card to the diploma of every foreign STEM graduate educated in the United States, and to lift annual per-country caps on H1-B visas.
Tax reform – TechNet believes our countries tax laws should be revised to allow repatriation of foreign profits, including implementation of a territorial system. Under the current tax regime, overseas profits, are all too often re-invested overseas. TechNet would rather see those dollars invested in the United States and used to create domestic jobs.
Regulatory reform – TechNet believes that the high cost of compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley is a major disincentive for private companies to access the public markets, and supports a exemption for newly public companies under a $1 billion market cap from Sarbanes-Oxley’s requirements.
We will keep you posted on TechNet’s progress in these areas.
This post was authored by Gus Coldebella.