The Washington Wire Archive - The S Corporation Association

Another Tax Gap Hearing, Another Standoff

In case you didn’t already catch the Senate Finance Committee hearing featuring Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson yesterday, here’s a quick summary.

The hearing itself was pretty entertaining and highlighted the on-going stand-off between Paulson and Finance Chairman Baucus. Baucus set a timetable for results saying that he wants a 90% voluntary compliance rate by the year 2017 – placing the responsibility on the Treasury to come up with this plan and deliver it in 90 days – July 18th – to the Committee. Paulson responded that he would be more than happy to come …

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admin2019-02-06T18:46:05+00:00April 19, 2007|

AMT Legislative Forecast

While Congress is considering numerous changes to the Tax Code, the 800 pound gorilla in tax policy these days is the projected growth of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) and what exactly Congress plans to do about it. A couple of news items this week do an excellent job of setting the table for what might happen.

According to the New York Times,

…

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admin2019-02-06T18:46:05+00:00April 13, 2007|

Illinois Governor Proposes Gross Receipts Tax!

S Corp Member Alert! Governor Blagojevich proposed last month to replace the Illinois state corporate income tax with a gross receipts tax (GRT). Under the current proposal, the state’s current 4.8% corporate income tax rate would be phased out over four years and the new GRT would be imposed on all revenues realized by IL businesses from the sale of good and services – .85% for goods and 1.95% for services. The change will increase projected annual revenue collections more than four-fold and has been characterized by the non-partisan Tax Foundation as the largest state tax increase this decade.

A massive …

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admin2019-02-06T18:46:05+00:00April 12, 2007|

Small Business Tax Package Passes Senate for Second Time

It’s getting so you can’t tell the tax bills without a program. The Small Business Tax package that includes the S Corporation Reform tax title has been adopted by the Senate for the second time, this time as a Baucus/Grassley amendment to the Iraqi War supplemental.

An earlier version of this package was adopted as part of the effort to raise the minimum wage. Differences between the House and the Senate stalled that bill, and the House attached its version to the supplemental as a means of breaking the stalemate. What happens now is …

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admin2019-02-06T18:46:05+00:00March 29, 2007|

Budget Targets Tax Gap

It is time to start a tally of how many times Congress spends revenues raised from closing the tax gap.

It’s an annual tradition. Each year, Congress picks out its favorite revenue raiser and then uses that revenue over and over again to pay for new spending or tax relief. Past contenders include overturning the Schmidt Baking decision, codification of the IRS’s economic substance test, SILOs, LILOs, COLI, etc. For 2007, the tax gap is the leading contender, and it’s already being used up.

As CongressDaily reported last week, the budget includes more than twenty “reserve funds” that allow for additional spending …

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admin2019-02-06T18:46:05+00:00March 20, 2007|