Christine Walizer, Author at The S Corporation Association

Save the Tax Code, Save the Country

Save the Tax Code, Save the Country

This week’s Ways and Means hearing adds to the growing conversation focused on “what comes next” for the tax code. Like the residents of a dying planet, the DC tax crowd appears to instinctively understand that something big needs to change if we’re going to survive the decade.

Rumor has it that the hearing was a promise then-Speaker McCarthy made to the Freedom Caucus in exchange for their support of a past effort. The challenge is consumption taxes – the focus of Wednesday’s hearing – are problematic for everybody. On the left, their …

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admin2023-12-07T20:28:33+00:00December 7, 2023|

Crapo on Tax Gap

Senator Mike Crapo, Ranking Member of the Finance Committee, is out with a piece in Tax Notes that highlights the various flaws in recent tax gap estimates. It’s a useful reminder that while these figures are great at generating headlines, they’re a lousy framework on which to base tax policy.

As longtime readers know, we’ve been skeptical of these figures for years. While S-Corp strongly supports policing illegal tax evasion, our message to policymakers has been that it’s wrong and counterproductive to characterize the entire gap as willful evasion.

Senator Crapo shares that skepticism. On the newly-released tax gap …

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admin2023-11-30T17:58:40+00:00November 30, 2023|

No One is Ready for the CTA

Just in time for Thanksgiving, Sunday’s Wall Street Journal’s editorial page highlighted our Main Street letter calling for a one-year delay of the Corporate Transparency Act’s reporting requirements. Appropriately titled The Coming Deluge for Small Business, the article reads:

The CTA assigns the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) with identifying shell companies used for illegal transactions and creating a registry of businesses with less than $5 million in annual sales and fewer than 20 employees.

That describes most small businesses in the country. In a Nov. 16 letter to Congressional leaders, 69 groups representing millions of small …

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admin2023-11-21T15:48:38+00:00November 21, 2023|

Congress Can Still Prevent a Regulatory Trainwreck

With just a month to go before the Corporate Transparency Act’s reporting requirements take effect, it’s abundantly clear – not to mention extremely worrying – that federal regulators simply do not have their act together when it comes to implementing the new law.

Recognizing this, the Main Street business community today called on lawmakers to delay the Corporate Transparency Act’s reporting requirements by one year, which would give the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) enough time to finish its work on the regulatory and education fronts.

The letter, which was signed by 70 trade associations including the National Federation …

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admin2023-11-21T14:05:58+00:00November 16, 2023|

Reality-Based Taxation

Actual tax policy remains on hold in Congress (listen to our recent “Talking Taxes in a Truck” for that discussion) but there’s been some activity in recent weeks that’s worth highlighting nonetheless. Specifically:

Yesterday’s Finance hearing entitled, “Examining How the Tax Code Affects High-Income Individuals and Tax Planning Strategies”
Wednesday’s Senate Budget hearing entitled, “Fairness and Fiscal Responsibility: Cracking Down on Wealthy Tax Cheats”
A new Auten/Splinter paper examining income inequality and income shares

Here’s a quick summary of each and how it is all related to pass-through taxation. Kind of like six degrees of separation minus …

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admin2023-11-13T15:26:26+00:00November 10, 2023|