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Main Street Tax Certainty Act

Good news for Main Street! Long time S-Corp champion Senator Steve Daines from Montana plans to introduce his “Main Street Tax Certainty Act” later today.  Cosponsored by more than a dozen of his colleagues, the bill would prevent rate hikes on America’s individually and family-owned businesses by making permanent the Section 199A 20-percent deduction.  This deduction was created by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act but is scheduled to sunset at the end of 2025.

The introduction of this legislation was widely anticipated in the business community, with more than 140 trade associations representing millions of Main Street businesses, including NFIB,

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2023-05-25T17:56:24+00:00May 18, 2023|

A Post-Disinflationary World

Today’s meeting between Congressional leaders and the President is the first of many to come in what might be termed the post-disinflationary world.

Interest rates peaked at 16 percent in the early 1980s and, following the Volker rate hikes and a nasty recession, the US embarked on an unprecedented 40-year disinflationary period where rates went from record highs to record lows.

Well, that’s over. Rising prices and record deficits are back and, absent a change of course, they are not going to get better.  Hence the importance of today’s meeting.

Debt and Interest

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2023-05-09T14:25:12+00:00May 9, 2023|

Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 26: “Testifying Ain’t Easy”

Fresh off of her triumphant visit to Capitol Hill we’re joined by Lynn Mucenski-Keck, an S-CORP Advisor and Principal at top-25 public accounting firm Withum. Lynn recaps her appearance before the House Small Business Committee, including the specific tax provisions discussed, her back and forth with some of the panel’s members, and her thoughts on the whole experience. Later we discuss IRS funding, advice for aspiring CPAs, and how Artificial Intelligence might shape the accounting profession in the years to come.

This episode of the Talking Taxes in a Truck podcast was recorded on April 21, 2023, and runs 27 minutes long.

2023-04-21T18:07:34+00:00April 21, 2023|

IRS Plan Light on Details

Last week, the IRS released a 150-page document outlining how it will spend some $80 billion in new funding authorized in the Inflation Reduction Act. The good news is that the report places a heavy emphasis on improving customer service. That includes processing returns faster, increasing the number of forms that can be filed electronically, improving its telephone service, and other important steps. It also includes a host of new initiatives and milestones designed to ensure those objectives are met.

Beyond that, however, the plan is positively obtuse when it comes to “enforcement activities” or how the agency will

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2023-04-14T17:56:32+00:00April 14, 2023|

A Main Street Care Package

Word on the street is that House Republicans will put together a package of pro-growth provisions later this Spring, including a tax title. The effort is timely given our uncertain economic outlook and the current tax landscape, and it works especially as a counter to the Biden administration’s aggressively anti-Main Street budget proposals.

What might make it into the tax package?  Here are some suggestions.

Inflation, EBIT, and 163(j)

A big revenue raiser in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was the new cap on interest deductibility. Starting in 2018, the amount of interest expense a business could write off was

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2023-04-06T21:58:11+00:00April 6, 2023|