Tax Policy - The S Corporation Association

Tax Outlook for 2010 — Starting in a Hole

The economic fear that gripped folks in the Fall of 2008 has resulted in a historic collapse of federal revenues.

Revenue collections since 1960 have stayed in a relatively tight pattern centered around 18 percent of our GNP. Considering the range of tax policies we’ve imposed on taxpayers during that time, the steadiness of the 18 percent mean is remarkable and suggests some sort of political or economic boundary is in effect.

That steadiness was broken last year when federal collections fell to their lowest level since 1950. Meanwhile, Washington’s response to the crisis has driven federal spending to levels not seen …

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admin2019-02-06T17:21:55+00:00January 15, 2010|

Business Community Supports Estate Tax Relief

Last week, the S Corporation Association joined a group of nearly 50 small business organizations to support estate tax legislation (H.R. 3905) to make permanent rates and exclusion levels more favorable than those in place in 2009. In a letter to family business allies on the Ways and Means Committee, the Family Business Estate Tax Coalition stated:

The cost of the estate tax falls heavily on family businesses and farms. The cost comes not only from paying the …

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admin2019-02-06T17:21:55+00:00November 13, 2009|

S-Corp Organizes Defense of Family Business

Led by S-CORP, a coalition of fifteen small business trade associations sent letters last week to the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means Committees urging policymakers to protect the interests of family-owned businesses during the upcoming estate tax debate.

“Penalizing businesses simply because they are family-owned is inconsistent with good tax policy, it creates an unworkable framework with two conflicting definitions of fair market value, it makes it more difficult for these family businesses to be passed on from one generation to the next, and should be rejected by Congress,” the …

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admin2019-02-06T17:21:55+00:00November 2, 2009|

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|