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Tax Notes Highlights House SALT Limitation

As we wrote recently, there’s lots to like about the House reconciliation package, but a dramatic expansion of B-SALT continues to give Main Street heartburn.

A new piece in Tax Notes lays out just how much pain the new regime would cause. Appropriately titled, “More SALTy Than Sweet?” the article beings:

Perhaps most importantly, the new SALT regime would allow for the continued viability of PTET regimes only in certain circumstances. However, PTET regimes would no longer be available in a variety of circumstances, and those circumstances are broader than an initial read might suggest.

Translation? Under the House bill, hundreds

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2025-06-12T19:40:09+00:00June 12, 2025|

Oppose the Nancy Pelosi Tax Hike

There are a number of mysteries embedded in the House reconciliation bill, but number one among those is why the House is taking tax advice from former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Buried in the House bill is a provision championed by the former Speaker to treat the active losses of a pass-through worse than any other type of loss.  The provision targets family businesses and would effectively preclude many of them from ever realizing these losses. Here’s why the Senate should reject this ill-advised provision.

Background: Prior to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), taxpayers with active business losses could use

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2025-06-03T18:32:57+00:00June 3, 2025|

In Defense of SALT Parity

House passage of the big reconciliation bill is a welcome development for the millions of Main Street job creators otherwise facing a massive tax hike next year. S-Corp enthusiastically supports the measure, but one question remains — why does a bill designed to prevent tax hikes on small and family-owned businesses raise taxes on many of those businesses instead?

To recap – the House-passed bill would limit SALT deductions for millions of pass-through business owners of so-called Specified Service Trade or Businesses (SSTBs), imposing an $80 billion tax hike on these businesses even as the C corporation down the street

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2025-05-29T09:49:23+00:00May 29, 2025|

Pro Main Street Tax Bill Passes House

The House adopted the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (yes, that is the official title) by a vote of 215-214 this morning. This is good news for Main Street businesses, who have a lot at stake in this effort – failure by Congress to act would result in one of the larger tax hikes in history, so success is essential here.

Pro-Main Street provisions in the bill include making permanent the lower rates on pass-through income, making permanent and expanding the 199A pass-through deduction, and making permanent and expanding the estate tax exemptions that benefit family businesses. The bill would

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2025-05-22T17:40:11+00:00May 22, 2025|

Tax Nerds Gone Wild

Main Street supports the tax bill adopted by the Ways and Means Committee this week, but not all the bill’s provisions are worth keeping. The House provision limiting SALT deductions on pass-throughs is a good example of why the “experts” need close supervision.  These provisions are hopelessly complicated and will hurt members of the very Main Street business community this bill is supposed to help.

First, some history. The TCJA imposed a new $10,000 cap on individual SALT deductions. It did not cap the SALT deductions of business entities, so corporate SALT (C-SALT) and any SALT paid by pass-through entities

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2025-05-18T13:45:34+00:00May 15, 2025|