Tax Policy - The S Corporation Association

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|

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|