The Washington Wire Archive - The S Corporation Association

Small Business Bill — Slogging Through the Senate

Last night, the Senate voted 60-39 to close debate on a Landrieu amendment to restore the $30 billion lending facility to the small business bill. This amendment was made necessary because earlier in the week, the leadership had dropped the lending facility due to staunch opposition from key swing votes.

The Senate is now on an unrelated bill, but we expect it to resume debate on the small business bill sometime next week, which will likely push House consideration of the bill into September. What’s the prognosis? Here’s the S-CORP Crystal Ball:

Progress on the bill had been slowed by two …

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admin2019-02-06T17:20:58+00:00July 23, 2010|

Finance Reviews Economic Impact of Tax Hikes

It’s July 14^th, 2010. There are approximately 30 legislative days before the fall elections and less than six months before huge portions of the tax code expire, so it’s only appropriate that today, the Senate Finance Committee held the first substantive hearing on the implications of allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire. Some key points:

Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) clearly takes a dim view of flow-through taxation for certain firms and appears dismissive of arguments that higher rates will hurt the business community and employment. Washington Wire readers are encouraged to watch the hearing and see for themselves, but it’s …

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admin2019-02-06T17:20:59+00:00July 14, 2010|

Congress Returns to Small Business Bill

Congress is back this week, and the pending business before the Senate is the small business tax bill that passed the House last month. Here’s BNA‘s review of the plan:

The Senate is expected to resume consideration July 13 of a small business lending bill with the hope of completing floor debate in only a few days, although a Democratic leadership aide warned that it might depend on Republican cooperation. Currently awaiting consideration is a substitute amendment (S. Amdt. 4402) that carries roughly $12 billion in tax cuts aimed at small businesses, including a highly sought after provision to extend …

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admin2019-02-06T17:20:59+00:00July 13, 2010|

S-CORP Blocks Payroll Tax Hike!

Armed with nothing more than the better policy argument, team S-CORP successfully rallied business groups and our friends on the Hill to defeat a proposed $9 billion payroll tax hike on S corporations last week.

The proposal, included in a larger package of so-called tax extenders, would have applied payroll taxes to all the income of service-oriented S corporations if they met a couple of tests. As your S-CORP allies observed, the new tests envisioned were more complicated and less enforceable than current law, meaning we would have taken a step backward had Congress enacted them.

The biggest ally we had in …

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JeremiahStaes2019-02-06T17:20:59+00:00July 2, 2010|

Baucus III

The tax community is still waiting for the third version of the Baucus substitute to be released. A “trial balloon” draft circulated yesterday made certain changes, but failed to address many of the sticking points holding up the overall bill.

Meanwhile, Senators Baucus and Reid spent most of yesterday negotiating with swing Republican votes — at this point, just Maine Republican Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins — to identify what changes are necessary in order to gain the 59^th and 60^th votes needed. As CongressDaily reports:

The chief target appears to be $24 billion to extend higher Medicaid matching funds …

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admin2019-02-06T17:20:59+00:00June 23, 2010|