The pressure is on again for Congress to put a halt to companies moving offshore to places like Bermuda to save on their tax bills.

On Monday in the New York Times, David Cay Johnston ran a story with the headline 'Company Is Foreign at Tax Time, but Seeks Americans-Only Work' on Nabors Industries using a so-called tax loophole to save money.

And yesterday a US Senate committee heard how American corporations and the accounting and law firms that advise them have invented complex and illegal schemes to avoid taxes with no fear the Internal Revenue Service will stop them.

Behind the renewed pressure is a desire to find extra cash for the US budget and estimates show that tax dollars will be down from $207 billion three years ago to $136 billion this year because of a slowing economy and tax shelters, according to the Congressional Budget Office.Tax shelters may be costing the US government as much as $15.1 billion annually, the General Accounting Office said, quoting an estimate prepared by an IRS contractor.

Mr. Johnston's article focussed in on Nabors saying that not only had it "used one law to escape American taxes by taking addresses in Bermuda and Barbados" but it was now trying to use another law to qualify for business open only to American companies.

And he said the company's competitors were "crying foul" saying they could not survive if Nabors Industries, is allowed to vie for contracts while paying "little or nothing" in taxes.

And the article said that unless Congress acts to level the playing field the competitors say they will lose so much business to Nabors that they will "go broke within a decade" or be forced themselves to try to become Bermuda companies so they can also escape taxes.

"There is no corporate income tax in Bermuda and under a treaty with Barbados, profits are taxed at one percent. The United States corporate tax rate is 35 percent. The savings to Nabors was $10 million last year," said the New York Times.

It added that Nabors now wants to qualify fully for business under the Jones Act, which since 1916 has required that ships engaged in purely domestic trade be built in American shipyards, owned by American companies and operated by American crews.

Nabors argues that its American subsidiary qualifies it for business under the Jones Act, and that under a 1996 law that allows foreign financing of such ships, its Bermuda parent is simply providing the money for these ships.

"Competitors call the arrangement improper, and have some support in Congress," added the article.

Yesterday in a Senate committee meeting former employees of jeans and trouser maker Levi Strauss and Co. and accountants KPMG LLP said they were fired or disciplined for objecting to illegal activity.

An anonymous witness testified behind a screen with his voice distorted to portray how U.S. companies pretend to lease foreign subways and water treatment plants to generate improper tax deductions. He was described as a former executive in the leasing industry.

These stories, and more like them, were aired to build support for Senate legislation designed to outlaw more than two dozen specific tax avoidance transactions and penalise companies that use others that have no legitimate business purpose, senators said. The House of Representatives is considering legislation that leaves companies more flexibility.

"Several times already we have passed bipartisan legislation that will provide the executive branch the tools needed to help address the current wave of tax shelters," Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley said.