Tax Policy - The S Corporation Association

Update on Estate Tax

We’ve been visiting Capitol Hill offices over the past couple weeks to talk about the estate tax and its impact on family businesses and now have a clearer idea of where the issue is headed. Here’s our latest intelligence.

As Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY) announced the other day, he intends to move separate legislation next week making permanent the 2009 estate tax rules, including an exemption amount of $3.5 million per spouse and top tax rate of 45 percent. Having the House move a permanent fix to the estate …

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admin2019-02-06T17:21:55+00:00October 27, 2009|

Health Care Update

The idea of taxing high cost plans is relatively new, and there are many outstanding questions about how it would work. For example, how exactly how would this excise tax raise revenue? The Senate plan imposes a 40 percent excise tax on high value plans with a cumulative cost of more than $21,000. But medical loss ratios for private health insurance plans easily exceed 60 percent of premiums, so insurance companies confronted with a 40 percent excise tax will simply stop issuing those plans.

At the employer level, that means if an employer used to offer …

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admin2019-02-06T17:21:55+00:00October 6, 2009|

Estate Tax Update

Where to start? The August break is nearly over and Congress is scheduled to return after Labor Day with a full agenda that includes finishing (or finishing off) health care reform, wrapping up all the spending bills, increasing the debt ceiling, doing something on the energy front, and adopting a package extending expiring tax provisions, including a possible estate tax compromise.

Earlier this month, Martin Vaughan of the AP had a nice piece outlining the current state of play on the estate tax. While the House is poised …

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admin2019-02-06T17:21:56+00:00August 31, 2009|

Estate Tax & PAYGO

The House is scheduled to take up a Paygo bill — short for b”pay-as-you-go” — this week that makes room for an estate tax fix. Paygo was established back in 1990 as a means of controlling the Federal deficit. Under Paygo, any increase in the deficit, either by a reduction in revenues or an increase in mandatory spending, must either be fully offset or it will be added to the Paygo scorecard and possibly trigger an across-the-board spending cut (called sequestration) at the end of the fiscal year.

Of…

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admin2019-02-06T17:21:56+00:00July 21, 2009|

S-Corp Priorities Included in Small Business Tax Relief Bill

Just prior to the July 4^th break, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) introduced a package of small-business friendly tax provisions, including one of our S-CORP priorities – built-in gains relief! Specifically, the legislation (S. 1381) includes:

Reducing the BIG holding period from 10 to 5 years;
Providing a 20 percent deduction for flow-through business income for businesses with less than $50 million in annual gross receipts; and
Increasing Section 179 expensing, lowering corporate rates, exempting …

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admin2019-02-06T17:21:56+00:00July 9, 2009|