Home/Tag: tax code

Tax Outlook

With the Republican convention behind us and the Democratic one this week, we thought it would be worthwhile to assess what the business community can expect on taxes in the next six months. We break the outlook into three buckets:

  1. First, the need to extend the tax policies set to expire on January 1;
  2. Second, the need to make more fundamental changes to the tax code; and
  3. Third, what to do about those pesky tax “extenders?”

2001 & 2003 Tax Cuts

Bucket one is easiest, since both sides have outlined their positions. The Republican House adopted legislation to generally extend all the 2001

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2019-02-01T20:12:49+00:00September 4, 2012|

Payroll Tax Hike Taken Up in the Senate

The Senate began debate on the bloated tax extender package today. The House passed its version 215-204 shortly before leaving for the Memorial Day recess on May 28th.

That vote was supposed to take place earlier in May, leaving time for the Senate to take action, but opposition to the tax hikes and higher deficits called for in the bill delayed consideration until the Leadership was able to cobble together the votes. As a result, the Senate had already left town and is just now taking up the bill today.

Regarding the schedule, Senator Reid faces a tight window to get the

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2019-02-06T17:20:59+00:00June 8, 2010|

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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2019-02-06T17:21:55+00:00October 6, 2009|

Estate Tax & PAYGO

 

The House is scheduled to take up a Paygo bill — short for b”pay-as-you-go” — this week that makes room for an estate tax fix. Paygo was established back in 1990 as a means of controlling the Federal deficit. Under Paygo, any increase in the deficit, either by a reduction in revenues or an increase in mandatory spending, must either be fully offset or it will be added to the Paygo scorecard and possibly trigger an across-the-board spending cut (called sequestration) at the end of the fiscal year.

Of

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2019-02-06T17:21:56+00:00July 21, 2009|

S-Corp Priorities Included in Small Business Tax Relief Bill

Just prior to the July 4th break, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) introduced a package of small-business friendly tax provisions, including one of our S-CORP priorities – built-in gains relief! Specifically, the legislation (S. 1381) includes:

  • Reducing the BIG holding period from 10 to 5 years;
  • Providing a 20 percent deduction for flow-through business income for businesses with less than $50 million in annual gross receipts; and
  • Increasing Section 179 expensing, lowering corporate rates, exempting

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2019-02-06T17:21:56+00:00July 9, 2009|