The framework omits a wide range of corporate tax increases that Mr. Biden campaigned on and pushed relentlessly in the first months of his presidency. He could not persuade 50 Senate Democrats to raise the corporate income tax rate to 28 percent from 21 percent, or even to a compromise 25 percent, or to eliminate incentives that allow some large firms — like fossil fuel producers — to reduce their tax bills.
“It’s a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, step,” Erica Payne, the president of a group called Patriotic Millionaires that has urged tax increases on corporations and the wealthy, said in a statement after Mr. Biden’s framework announcement on Friday. “But it’s a step.”
Business groups fought the president’s plans to raise corporate taxes, with the help of some Democrats in the House and Senate, and they denounced the increases included in Mr. Biden’s framework. The National Association of Manufacturers said in a statement that the domestic minimum tax would punish investment and “harm our industry’s ability to drive our economic recovery.”
Infighting among Democrats also jeopardized the Biden administration’s strategy to raise $700 billion in tax revenue without increasing tax rates at all. Plans to invest $80 billion in strengthening the I.R.S. and making banks to provide the agency with more information about the finances of their customers have faced fierce opposition from lawmakers, who are poised to jettison the bank reporting requirement.
The administration is continuing to negotiate with skeptical lawmakers to find a way to keep the I.R.S. policy alive. The Treasury Department said on Friday that even the additional enforcement money for the I.R.S. could still generate $400 billion in additional tax revenue over 10 years and said that was a “conservative” estimate.
An administration official said that the difficulty in rolling back the Trump tax cuts was the result of the fact that the Democrats are a big tent party ideologically with a very narrow majority in Congress, where a handful of moderates currently rule.
In Rome, Mr. Biden’s struggle to raise taxes more has not complicated the sealing of the international agreement. The move by the heads of state to commit to putting the deal in place by 2023 looms as the featured achievement of the summit, and Mr. Biden’s surest victory of a European swing that also includes a climate conference in Scotland next week.