The recent news of President Barack Obama calling for curbing offshore tax havens and corporate tax breaks is just the latest in several initiatives to push jobs back to the United States to try and stem rising unemployment.

This time, Obama wants to go after companies that have operations or subsidiaries in tax havens like the Cayman Islands – the New York Times article I linked to in the previous graf specifically names companies including Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, Pfizer, and Procter & Gamble, that would reportedly be affected greatly if this came to fruition.

Essentially, the tax laws were originally intended to prevent multinational corporations from being double-taxed by the U.S. and foreign countries — but now Obama wants to repeal them.

According to Obama’s estimations, this would raise $210 billion over the next decade and help offset tax cuts for middle-income taxpayers and a permanent tax credit for companies’ research and development costs, according to the New York Times piece.

From a contact center perspective, it makes me wonder what the fate will be of the business process outsourcing space, one that utilizes offshore locales including — but certainly not limited to — India, China, and the Philippines. I partially covered this in a recent news story about Datamonitor’s five key outsourcing trends to look for in 2009.

When I spoke to analyst Peter Ryan for that story, one of the hot spots had to do with the potential resurgence to bring back outsourcing onshore. That said, Ryan was hesitant to definitively say it would work. In that article, he said: “Even if President Obama is able to do this, how do you find people to work in them? Unemployment is a bit higher, but it is still challenging to find workers for these contact centers.”

It seems his thoughts rang true. In February, a Senate proposal to give multinational companies a big tax cut if they brought profits back to the United States was defeated handily.

Circling back with Ryan, he says the latest news from Obama might be posturing more than anything else. “I think that its being rolled out in 2011 speaks to the fact that it is possible window dressing, and it gives Obama enough time to rescind the proposals, if need be,” he says. “Also, from an electoral perspective, 2011 runs up to the 2012 presidential cycle, which could be convenient for a president wanting to appear to keep jobs at home.”

If Obama does get his wish, though, Ryan says it will not be good news for contact center outsourcers selling offshore delivery for several reasons:

• increased price points;
• reduction in operational flexibility; and
• significant tax disadvantages in relation to other Western countries.

“There can be little doubt that the Obama administration is doing its best to make good on campaign promises to encourage U.S. firms to limit offshoring as much as possible,” he says. “In the case of the recent changes to the tax code, outsourcers should examine the implications for their operations prior to the 2011 implementation point, so as to determine what impact it will have on their ability to deliver high-end and cost-effective contact center services.”

For companies involved in outsourcing in offshore locales, what are your thoughts about this latest push from Obama?