The Washington Wire Archive - The S Corporation Association

Yet Another “Millionaire Surtax” Introduced in the Senate

Yesterday, Senators Collins (R-ME) and McCaskill (D-MO) introduced legislation to extend the payroll tax holiday, among other things, and to pay for it with a mixture of tax hikes. Primary among the tax hikes is yet another modified version of the millionaire’s surtax. By our count, this is the fifth surtax considered in the Senate in the last three months.

In this case, the surtax is two percent and would apply to incomes exceeding $1 million, excluding small business income where the taxpayer works at the business. The goal of this exception is to avoid the charge that the surtax would …

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admin2019-02-01T20:24:44+00:00December 8, 2011|

Year-End Wrap Up

Two headlines in Politico this morning tell the story on tax policy for the remainder of the year: “Tax Cut Boils Down to Who Pays” and “K Street Mounts Last-Ditch Blitz for Tax Breaks.”

The first headline refers to the pending expiration of the payroll tax holiday. The Administration, Congressional Democrats, and some portion of the Republican conference support extending the payroll deduction through the upcoming year. As Politico reports:

It’s all but a foregone conclusion that President Barack Obama will win on the payroll tax-cut extension - on politics, policy or both - but Congress still has two weeks to …

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admin2019-02-01T20:24:44+00:00December 5, 2011|

What’s Next?

The Super Committee announced today that it will not produce any recommendations for Congress to act on next month. The markets are reacting badly, which surprises us. They should have seen this coming. Maybe they were hoping for some sort of signal that Congress can function and is prepared to deal with our ongoing fiscal crisis, but every signal we received for the past two months suggested the Committee was going to fall short.

Now that they have missed the mark, the question becomes, “What’s next?”

For the remainder of 2011, Congress needs to act on the tax provisions set to expire …

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admin2019-02-01T20:24:44+00:00November 21, 2011|

Super Committee — Running Out of Airspeed and Ideas

Just like an old pilot, the Super Committee appears to be running out of options in its race to find $1.2 trillion in savings. With one week left before the November 23rd deadline, time is short and the sides are far apart. There has been a measurable increase in activity and it’s obvious the Committee members are trying to cobble together something, but can they bridge the gap?

The lack of time for the Committee to act would suggest no.

The deadline for them to favorably vote on a proposal is November 23rd, but the real deadline is much sooner. Why? The …

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admin2019-02-01T20:24:44+00:00November 16, 2011|

Pass-Through Businesses Get Their Day

On the heels of the release of the Ways and Means Committee’s discussion draft to reform the international tax code and drop the corporate rate to 25 percent, a Subcommittee of the House Committee on Small Business held a hearing Thursday morning to discuss how and why the business tax reform needs to include pass-through businesses.

Entitled “Pro-Growth Tax Policy: Why Small Businesses Need Individual Tax Reform,” the hearing was rife with good testimony. Tax Notes had a nice write-up on it this morning:

“Flow-through businesses would lose the benefit of widely used and long-standing provisions, such as accelerated depreciation and …

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admin2019-02-01T20:24:44+00:00November 4, 2011|