Bermuda and the so-called "Patriot Tax" aimed at stopping companies reincorporating offshore, hit the headlines again on Friday with Houston Business Journal and AP news agency focusing on the issue.

Newspapers in the United States have been running with the story of allegedly unpatriotic US companies reincorporating to save on their tax bills.

Houston Business Journal said: "Tourists aren't the only ones longing for the tropical shores of Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. Seeing an opportunity to slash the taxes they pay on foreign-earned revenue, global Houston companies including Nabors Industries Inc. are seeking to reincorporate from a US legal home to a foreign one."

AP said: " US companies are scrambling to complete tax-cutting relocations of corporate headquarters to offshore sites as momentum builds in Congress to stop the trickle before it becomes a flood."

Momentum has been building in the United States to put in place controversial laws that will stop the flood of companies leaving the US for tax-friendly Bermuda.

This month lawmakers vowed to push for legislation that will halt companies reincorporating in tax friendly locations like Bermuda, dubbing it the "Repo Act".

The Senate Finance Committee leaders said they would aggressively press for legislation that stops US companies from moving their headquarters overseas to cut taxes.

"Our legislation ... is designed to put the brakes on the potential rush to move US corporate headquarters to tax havens," said panel chairman Max Baucus, of Montana who along with Charles Grassey of Iowa is spearheading the campaign.

This year alone US legislators have introduced two bills to the House of Representatives aimed at stopping US companies from relocating offshore, particularly to Bermuda.

The bills have been proposed by by Rep. Richard Neal and Rep. Scott McInnis and several American legislators have indicated they will put forward further bills, including Sen. Paul Wellstone and Sen. John Kerry.

In essence, the bills aim to levy US taxes on all income - including foreign revenues and sales - earned by corporations that reincorporate outside of the US.

The debate has largely focused on Bermuda-based companies such as Tyco, Global Crossing, Ingersoll-Rand and a company which has not yet "redomesticated", Stanley Works.

Last week Weatherford International Ltd and Leucadia National Corporation also announced plans to move to Bermuda to save taxes.

Sen. Baucus said he plans to bring the bill up for a vote soon and added he was "quite confident" the legislation can be passed into law this year to reduce occurrences of the practice.

But after remaining quiet during the year, just recently Bermuda has been fighting back against the bad press with Premier Jennifer Smith stating that she did not expect other countries to tell Bermuda how to collect their taxes.

In an interview with The Royal Gazette this month she said: "We don't expect other countries to tell us how we should collect our tax."

Huston Business Journal lumped Cayman Islands and Bermuda together and pointed to the proposed reincorporating of Houston-based Nabors from Delaware to Bermuda which would reduce the land-drilling contractor's tax rate from 35 percent to between 20 percent and 25 percent the journal quotes estimates.

It also pointed to Houston-based manufacturer and tool-maker Cooper Industries Inc. believes its planned domicile change from Ohio to Bermuda will lower its tax rate from roughly 32 percent to between 20 percent and 25 percent.

And it said that earlier this month, Weatherford International Inc. unveiled plans to move its domicile from Delaware to Bermuda. With about 60 percent of earnings currently derived from outside the US - "a number that can be expected to trend higher" the move would reduce Weatherford's tax rate from 35 percent to approximately 28 percent, the analysts are quoted as saying.

The AP piece points to Leucadia National Corp. - a New York-based holding company whose subsidiaries include Empire Group insurance, plastic manufacturing and American Investment Bank - this month announced it was amending its charter so that only a majority vote of shareholders is necessary to approve its planned move, instead of a two-thirds majority.