Finance Minister Eugene Cox is expected to report today in the House of Assembly on his visit last week to Washington, DC to lobby officials on the so-called Patriot Tax.

The only thing he has said so far in public is that the visit's timing was perfect and that it had been very positive.

Yesterday, Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel, who had previously supported Bermuda on issues like the US-Bermuda Tax Treaty and the US bases withdrawal, tried to force legislation through that would bring US companies that have redomiciled to Bermuda back to the US.

So much for perfect timing.

To be sure, Mr. Rangel's move, attaching the Patriot Tax bill to a tax measure the Republican majority desperately wants to pass, failed. But it showed that the efforts by the US to close this "loophole" are serious and are not going away.

And Mr. Cox and others who are concerned about this measure have a difficult task on their hands. The patriotism versus profits is a hard one to combat and a public campaign is likely to fail.

That does not mean that Bermuda should not continue to try to educate politicians and policy makers on what the Island's financial sector is all about, and to point out that it was not Bermuda that created this problem, but the US tax code.

As a Wall Street Journal editorial pointed out yesterday, the US has one of the highest corporate tax rates among the so-called developed nations. It is also one of the few countries which taxes US-based companies on their foreign earnings - the primary reason why they are redomiciling to Bermuda in order to compete with non-US companies.

Nor should foreign domiciles be criticised for what US states do anyway, the newspaper noted: "To criticise US firms for reducing their tax bill is to lose sight of why we want tax competition - and why we encourage it domestically. Many major US companies (including the one that publishes this newspaper) incorporate in Delaware to take advantage of its low corporate tax rate and less burdensome regulations. Competition of this sort among the states is beneficial because it encourages the efficient use of tax dollars.

"... These same principles apply internationally, and we need tax laws that reflect them. Far from being an unpatriotic tax-dodger, Stanley Works is merely a messenger, alerting the politicians to what will happen in the absence of reform."