Support CTA Relief
The House Small Business Committee is holding a hearing on the Corporate Transparency Act later this month. One witness will be Carol Roth, a bestselling author and small business advocate who has helped lead the ...
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Main Street on the Hill
S-Corp and its friends at the National Federation of Independent Business hosted a Tax Day briefing for Hill staff and other stakeholders yesterday. The topic: the massive tax hikes threatening Main Street at the end ...
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199A Takes Center Stage
As we wrote earlier this week, it’s a busy April for tax policy. The packed agenda kicked off Tuesday with a hearing at the House Small Business Committee entitled, “Exploring the Adverse Effects of High ...
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A Taxing Month for Lawmakers
Congress is back in session this week for what promises to be a busy April for tax policy. Here is a quick overview of what’s happening. Smith-Wyden Bill in Senate The big-ticket item is the ...
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C Corps for Everybody?
S-Corp’s mantra for tax reform is “S corps for everybody!” Tax all businesses once, tax them when the money is earned, tax them at a reasonable rate, and then leave them alone. In other words, ...
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Time to Pause the CTA
The Main Street business community came out in force today calling on Congress to enact the Protect Small Business and Prevent Illicit Financial Activity Act (S. 3625). The legislation, championed by Senator Tim Scott (R-NC), ...
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More than a Dime’s Worth of Difference
Two events took place this week which demonstrate just how remarkably divergent the potential paths of tax policy are next year. First, the Senate Finance Committee held a rare hearing Tuesday on the challenges faced ...
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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 36: The CTA Compliance Wrinkle No One’s Talking About
The Corporate Transparency Act is now in effect, imposing complex reporting requirements on every small business in the country, and many large ones too. But what if the person best equipped to assist those businesses ...
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CTA’s Prospects, Post-NSBA v. Yellen
Friday’s District Court decision declaring the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) unconstitutional is garnering lots of attention. As the Wall Street Journal editorial board noted, “The judgment is a legal bullet dodged for millions of small ...
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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 35: Tax Foundation’s Scott Hodge on the Outsized Role that Taxes Play in Our Daily Lives
Our latest guest is Scott Hodge, who is president emeritus at the Tax Foundation and author of the excellent new book Taxocracy: What You Don't Know About Taxes and How They Rule Your Daily Life. ...
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Court CTA Ruling a Huge Win for Main Street
Huge news to kick off the weekend -- a federal judge just ruled that the Corporate Transparency Act is unconstitutional, marking the end of a 16-month legal battle led by the National Small Business Association ...
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The “Experts” Get 199A Wrong
When Congress finishes work on the tax package pending in the Senate, we expect the conversation to pivot rapidly to what we should do about all those expiring TCJA provisions at the end of 2025. ...
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FinCEN in the House
The head of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) will testify tomorrow before the House Financial Services Committee (HFSC). The hearing will focus on the Corporate Transparency Act’s implementation and is a good opportunity for ...
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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 34: Piper Sandler’s Don Schneider on the Tax Package’s Fate, Looming Debt and Deficit Crisis, and Monetary Policy Outlook
The House last week moved a large tax package. Will the Senate follow suit? To answer that and other burning questions, we spoke to Don Schneider, Deputy Head of U.S. Policy at Piper Sandler and ...
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Tax Package Heads to the Senate
Yesterday evening the House came out in strong support for the tax relief package negotiated by Chairmen Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Jason Smith (R-MO). Less than two weeks after sailing through the Ways & Means ...
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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 33: Eurasia Group’s Jon Lieber on the Tax Package, Elections, and more.
We’re just two weeks into the New Year and Washington is already abuzz with potential deals on spending and taxes. What’s in the bill? What’s out? Can lawmakers get it across the finish line? This ...
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2024 Tax Policy Outlook
It still feels like the calm before the storm, but federal lawmakers are back in town to kick off what could be a surprisingly interesting year for tax policy. Below are a few items we’ll ...
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CTA Criticism Growing
With the Treasury Department’s beneficial ownership reporting portal now up and running, the Corporate Transparency Act is officially in effect. That means covered entities formed this year – 5 to 6 million, by FinCEN’s own ...
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Congress Moves CTA Delay (Maybe)
Lots of action with the CTA in the weeks leading up to New Year’s. On Tuesday past, the House advanced the Protect Small Business and Prevent Illicit Financial Activity Act (H.R. 5119) sponsored by Representatives ...
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Webinar Recap: CTA Compliance – What Main Street Needs to Know
Starting in January, the Corporate Transparency Act will require more than 32 million businesses and other legal entities to report the personal information of their owners, key employees, and others to the federal government. 32 ...
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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 32: The State of State Taxes
Congress may have skipped tax policy this year, but the states have been busy. To get an idea of where things stand both good and bad, we talked to Jared Walczak, Vice President of State ...
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Join Us: Fines, Jail Time, and Headaches – CTA Compliance Challenges for Main Street Businesses
The Corporate Transparency Act is the most far-reaching data collection mandate you've never heard of. Starting January, the new law will require more than 32 million businesses and other legal entities to report the personal ...
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Save the Tax Code, Save the Country
Save the Tax Code, Save the Country This week’s Ways and Means hearing adds to the growing conversation focused on “what comes next” for the tax code. Like the residents of a dying planet, the ...
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Crapo on Tax Gap
Senator Mike Crapo, Ranking Member of the Finance Committee, is out with a piece in Tax Notes that highlights the various flaws in recent tax gap estimates. It’s a useful reminder that while these figures ...
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No One is Ready for the CTA
Just in time for Thanksgiving, Sunday’s Wall Street Journal’s editorial page highlighted our Main Street letter calling for a one-year delay of the Corporate Transparency Act’s reporting requirements. Appropriately titled The Coming Deluge for Small ...
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Congress Can Still Prevent a Regulatory Trainwreck
With just a month to go before the Corporate Transparency Act’s reporting requirements take effect, it’s abundantly clear – not to mention extremely worrying – that federal regulators simply do not have their act together ...
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Reality-Based Taxation
Actual tax policy remains on hold in Congress (listen to our recent “Talking Taxes in a Truck” for that discussion) but there’s been some activity in recent weeks that’s worth highlighting nonetheless. Specifically: Yesterday’s Finance ...
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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 31: Tax Grab Bag with Ryan Ellis – IRS Funding, SALTy Rumors, Year-End Tax Bill, and Mo(o)re
Congress is in overdrive tackling its legislative to-do list and things are starting to pile up on the tax policy front. To help us keep track of it all we’re joined by repeat podcast guest ...
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Competing Tax Reforms (Part 1)
Massive deficits, the fiscal cliff, and Social Security’s pending insolvency are jump-starting a long overdue debate over real tax reform – specifically, how should we best reorganize the tax code to survive the fiscal hurdles ...
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IRS Ramps Up
Doug Holtz-Eakin has a thoughtful blog post this week on the deterioration of our “voluntary” compliance tax system. Whenever the term “voluntary” is used when discussing taxes, the tendency is for the audience to bust out ...
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Tax Implications of the Speaker Battle
Last week, eight House Republicans, led by Representative Matt Gaetz (FL), voted with the entire Democratic conference to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy. What implications does this action have for Main Street businesses and tax policy? ...
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The Importance of NSBA’s Lawsuit
The House Financial Services Committee held a markup yesterday to consider twelve pieces of legislation. Notably absent was the Protecting Small Business Information Act (H.R. 4035), a bill to delay the Corporate Transparency Act’s January ...
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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 30: George Callas on Moore: Will the SCOTUS Upend the Tax Code?
How far will the Supreme Court go when it takes up Moore later this year? Will the IRS need to start writing refund checks? Is the entire pass-through regime in jeopardy? Can civil society survive? ...
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Hitting the “Pause” Button on the CTA
With the Corporate Transparency Act’s new reporting requirements set to take effect beginning January 1st, Main Street is asking Congress to pump the brakes on this ill-conceived law. A letter signed by more than 80 trade associations -- ...
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Our SALT Parity Campaign Back in the News
Richard Rubin is out with a new piece in the Wall Street Journal that highlights just how successful our SALT Parity efforts have been. The article centers on an upcoming Tax Policy Center analysis which ...
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Section 199A Reality Check
Chuck Marr, who heads up tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, took to Twitter recently to slam the Section 199A deduction. It’s a perfect example of the empty rhetoric deployed by ...
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Support for 199A Reaches New Heights
The effort to make permanent the Section 199A Main Street business deduction just hit a significant milestone. In just two weeks the Main Street Tax Certainty Act (H.R. 4721), introduced by Congressman Lloyd Smucker, has ...
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More on Moore
We promised more on Moore v. United States, and here it is. The pending court case is garnering lots of attention, including the WSJ, the Tax Policy Center, Tax Notes, former tax staffer George Callas, ...
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NY Needs R&E Expensing!
Lynn Mucenski-Keck, an S-Corp Advisor and Principal at the accounting firm Withum, is out with new Forbes piece highlighting how punitive the new research and experimentation (R&E) tax regime is to businesses in New York ...
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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 29: NFIB’s Kevin Kuhlman on Looming CTA Reporting Requirements and 199A Permanence
Our latest podcast guest is Kevin Kuhlman, Vice President of Federal Government Relations at the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB). Kevin kicks things off by recapping his testimony before the House Financial Services Committee, ...
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Main Street Certainty in the House!
Congressman Lloyd Smucker today will introduce the Main Street Tax Certainty Act, legislation to make permanent the Section 199A deduction. The bill mirrors S. 1706, recently introduced by Senator Steve Daines, so the campaign to ...
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Targeting the CTA
S-Corp President Brian Reardon is out with an op-ed in the Washington Examiner that breaks down just how onerous and poorly constructed the Corporate Transparency Act’s reporting requirements really are. We’ve written about the CTA ...
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Tax News Roundup
Before the Independence Day festivities kick off, we wanted to wrap up the week by sharing three news-worthy items on the tax front important to the Main Street community. SCOTUS on Taxes First, the Supreme ...
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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 28: Tony Simmons on the 150-Year Tabasco Legacy
This week’s guest is Tony Simmons, the former President and CEO of McIlhenny Company and long-time Chairman of the S Corporation Association. Tony shares the history of Tabasco – starting with a single pepper plant ...
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The Importance of 199A
Today’s House Budget Committee hearing on “Incentivizing Economic Excellence Through Tax Policy” is a good chance for members to learn about the importance of the Section 199A deduction for individually and family-owned businesses. This deduction ...
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Congress Focused on CTA Flaws
With just six months to go before the Corporate Transparency Act’s (CTA) reporting requirements take effect, federal lawmakers are sounding the alarm over just how far reaching – and poorly constructed – the rules are. ...
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Does the House Tax Bill Have Legs?
The Ways and Means Committee began marking-up its long-discussed economic package earlier this morning. The package includes a number of provisions important to the pass-through community, including restoring R&E deductions and offering relief from the ...
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Debt Limit Deal
The BIG news over Memorial Day was the debt limit deal reached by President Joe Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy. While the package is an obvious compromise, the result is a big positive signal for ...
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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 27: “We’re Not Sure, But It’s Probably Not Good”
For today’s Debt Ceiling-themed episode, we’re joined by repeat guest Joe Lieber, Director of Research at Washington Analysis, an institutional research firm that closely tracks the goings-on in Congress. Joe offers his thoughts on the ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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, ...
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S-CORP Testifies
The S Corporation Association took center stage on Capitol Hill yesterday at a Tax Day hearing before the House Small Business Committee. Lynn Mucenski-Keck, an S-Corp Advisor and Principal at the national accounting firm Withum ...
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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 ...
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Reviewing the SALT Parity Landscape
Thanks to the efforts of S-Corp and our allies over the past five years, 31 states have adopted our SALT Parity reforms to date, with another half-dozen actively considering them. Those new laws have enabled ...
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New Budget Continues the Assault on Main Street
President Biden unveiled his budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year yesterday and, as we predicted, it’s packed with tax hikes and other poorly-conceived policies that directly target the Main Street business community. The document ...
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An Anti-Main Street Budget
The President is set to release his third budget later today and, as in the past, it's sure to call for higher taxes on family-owned businesses. The Administration already circulated a fact sheet on its ...
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It’s the Spending
Tonight’s State of the Union address will call for increased stock buyback taxes and a billionaire minimum tax, among other items. Neither is going anywhere. Business owners should focus instead on the pending debt limit ...
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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 25: “A Quiet Place”
With the 118th Congress underway, there’s a general sentiment that the next two years of divided government will be a quiet place for tax policy. To explore that question we invited Marc Gerson, Miller & ...
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Your State Could Be Costing You Millions
To mark the five-year anniversary of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Tax Notes recently released a podcast reflecting on the 2017 bill, with a focus on how states have responded to its $10,000 cap ...
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Main Street Backs CTA Legal Challenge
This week, the Main Street business community voiced its support the National Small Business Association’s lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA). The letter was signed by more than 45 trade associations, ...
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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 24: “I’m Worried About Everything”
If you operate a business, your inbox is probably full of solicitations from firms promising a big payday through the Employee Retention Credit. We receive several a day, which got us wondering – what’s the ...
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ENABLERS Targets Main Street, Not Oligarchs
A recent op-ed in the Washington Post has all the earmarks of blatant government overreach disguised as national security advocacy. The op-ed, Congress is Letting International Money Launderers off the Hook supports the so-called ENABLERS ...
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The Corporate Transparency Act: Bad Policy and Unconstitutional
As we’ve observed previously, the Corporate Transparency Act is a poorly constructed bit of law. It will do little to combat money laundering as the criminals will simply refrain from self-reporting their crimes, but it ...
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Webinar Replay: Midterms Recap
On Thursday S-Corp hosted a webinar to break down the results of the midterm elections, and explain what it all means for the S corporation business community. Hosted by S-Corp President Brian Reardon, the webinar ...
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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 23: “Maybe Everything We Know Is Wrong”
For this special Midterm Elections-themed podcast we’re joined by Jade West, Chief Government Relations officer at the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors and Liam Donovan, a Principal at Bracewell. Jade, Liam, and Brian kick things off ...
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Quick Take on the Tax Gap
Last week’s release of new Tax Gap estimates continued the recent spate of good news on the tax front. Recall that Treasury’s end-of-fiscal year results earlier this month showed collections rose 21 percent to a ...
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Legislative Outlook: Lame Duck and Beyond
Last week we previewed the Midterm elections and shared our thoughts about how things will likely shake out. Today we’ll take a look at how those results will impact tax policy in the lame duck ...
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Election Outlook
The elections are less than a month out, and the implications for S corporations are huge. If Democrats retain control, we can expect two more years of policy risk, with the threat of higher rates ...
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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 22: Tax Girl
Our latest podcast guest is Kelly Phillips Erb, managing shareholder at the Erb Law Firm, Team Lead for Insights and Commentary at Bloomberg Tax and Accounting, and the face behind the excellent @TaxGirl Twitter account ...
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Main Street Opposes ENABLERS Act
The S Corporation Association joined with dozens of associations today to oppose the ENABLERS Act, legislation that would adversely affect millions of businesses, charities, and foundations, as well as their employees and investors. More than ...
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Tax Gap Claims Come Up Short, Again
We’ve been skeptical of grandiose promises to close the so-called tax gap for years (here, here, here). Part of that skepticism stems from the blatant self-interest of those making the estimates – we could raise ...
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Disable the ENABLERS Act
Worried about your privacy? You should be. Congress is back and is quietly moving legislation that threatens the privacy and security of millions of business owners, charities, foundations, and investors. The bill is called the ...
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Shrinking Main Street
ADP is out with its revised, independent jobs forecast this week and it shows continued challenges for Main Street. As with past reports (before they revamped the product to produce a truly independent alternative to ...
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Inflation Reduction Act Targets All Taxpayers
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has kicked off a rigorous debate over the $80 billion in new funding for the IRS. Republicans argue the funds will be used to audit the middle-class while the Biden ...
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Ditch the IRA
The Main Street business community today sent a letter to lawmakers with a simple message: many of the proposed tax policies in the Inflation Reduction Act would harm individually and family-owned businesses and should be ...
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“Getting Less for More”
CBS News is out with a great interview that highlights the growing concerns of small business owners as they grapple with rising inflation, worker shortages, supply chain disruptions, and the looming threat of an economic ...
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Recession, Inflation, and the Small Business Sector
Want to understand what’s happening in the economy? Look to inflation-adjusted data. Wage levels and company revenues are reported in nominal terms, while the GDP estimates are adjusted for inflation. That’s why they appear to ...
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Summers on Tax Hikes
Larry Summers has been right on inflation for the past year, but what about his recent comments on tax hikes? Here’s what he told reporters last week: “I sure wish we could get past this ...
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What’s Next for Tax Policy?
Senate Democrats plan to advance a budget reconciliation bill in the coming weeks, but it will not include the $300-400 billion in Main Street tax hikes originally planned. The decision to scrap the tax provisions ...
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Inflation Hits Highs as Small Business Optimism Hits Lows
Today’s news that inflation hit 9.1 percent in June comes a day after NFIB released it latest small business report, and the results are grim. Small business sentiment is down for the sixth straight month ...
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Main Street Opposes Tax Hikes
Today the S Corporation Association joined with more than 200 trade associations to oppose the Senate’s latest efforts to raise taxes on small and family-owned businesses. The letter was spurred by recent reports that lawmakers ...
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Main Street Gets Squeezed
If the Senate needs more reasons to drop the toxic Build Back Better Act, here’s a good one – job creation on Main Street has been negative over the past four months. A recent piece ...
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Stop Main Street Tax Hikes
With Congress set to depart DC for the next two weeks, there’s been a notable increase in chatter regarding the status of BBB negotiations: On Friday, Politico reported that Schumer and Manchin met twice last ...
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Congress Needs Its Anti-Recession Tools
With the odds of a recession rising, a common tool used to counter past slowdowns may no longer be available. That’s bad news for private businesses and the workers they employ. Congressional tax-writers need to ...
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The $10 Billion Tax Cut No One’s Talking About
The Wall Street Journal’s Richard Rubin is out with a new piece that looks at our ongoing SALT Parity efforts, and the massive savings they’ve unlocked for hundreds of thousands of family businesses across the ...
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Webinar Recap: Inflation, Taxes, and Family Businesses – What do Voters Really Think?
Yesterday, S-CORP hosted a webinar to highlight the results of our new national survey. David Winston, whose research and polling firm conducted the survey, was on hand to break down the results and explain how ...
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Webinar: Inflation, Taxes, and Family Businesses – What do Voters Really Think?
Please join us this Thursday, May 19th at 4pm (ET) for a webinar highlighting the results of our new national survey. David Winston, whose research and polling firm The Winston Group conducted the survey, will explain how ...
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NIIT Picking
Tax Notes is out with a new piece that makes the case for expanding the Net Investment Income Tax (NIIT). The article quotes exclusively from individuals who would like to see the tax applied to ...
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More Evidence Tax Hikes Boost Prices
Still more evidence the tax hikes included in the Build Back Better Act would make inflation worse. As noted by Bruce Thompson in the Washington Examiner, a “Working Paper” from the National Bureau of Economic ...
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Small Business “Boom” is Anything But
At a roundtable event on Thursday, President Biden unveiled a new White House report that touts a “small business boom,” and attributes this success to his administration’s economic strategy. The timing of the event was ...
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Collections Undermine Tax Hike Narrative
The progressive case for raising taxes is premised upon two arguments – 1) income shares are increasingly concentrated at the top and 2) the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) reduced taxes for the wealthy ...
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Virginia Unlocks Millions in SALT Parity Relief
With Tax Day just around the corner, we have some good news that should help ease the pain. Yesterday, Governor Glenn Youngkin signed HB 1121 into law, making Virginia the 25th state to adopt our ...
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Senator Kyrsten Sinema Joins Small Business Owners at Tax Summit
S-Corp and NFIB hosted their second annual Main Street Tax Summit yesterday – a virtual event focused on tax policy issues faced by individually- and family-owned businesses. Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) kicked off the event ...
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Inflation and the BBB, Revisited
With the DC tax press continuing to pester Senator Joe Manchin about the BBB’s prospects (response: still dead) we thought we’d revisit yet another reason Congress should leave the BBB behind – inflation. Inflation has ...
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You’re Invited! Second Annual Main Street Tax Summit
NFIB & S-Corp Present the Second Annual Main Street Tax Summit With introductory remarks from Senator Kyrsten Sinema Thursday, April 7th 10:00 - 11:15am (EDT) (No signup necessary - just use ...
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Taxing Unrealized Gains Still a Bad Idea
Jason Furman thinks the Biden Administration’s soon-to-be proposed minimum tax is a good idea. We can’t think of any reasons why. Administratively, it will be a nightmare of complex accounting, valuation, and litigation. From the ...
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Tax Hike Premise Takes Another Hit
Since its introduction, the Biden administration has repeatedly claimed that its tax plan would reverse a trend of rising income inequality in America. The ensuing debate focused almost exclusively on who pays what. Serious questions ...
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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 18: Beware the “Slimmed Down Package”
On our latest episode we’re joined by Miller & Chevalier Tax Department Chair, veteran tax policy expert, and longtime S-Corp ally Marc Gerson. Marc breaks down recent comments from Senator Joe Manchin that outlined a ...
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Main Street Shrinks as Employment Expands
In a statement released last week, the White House boasted that February’s employment numbers – which reported 678,000 new jobs – were the result of “the new economic approach [President Biden] talked about in the ...
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Parsing Manchin (Again)
Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) once again gave life to the moribund Build Back Better discussions Wednesday by outlining a new, slimmed-down version of the bill that he could support. According to Politico: Manchin said that ...
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The State of the Union and Taxes – What to Expect
Leading up to tonight’s State of the Union address, advocates of the stalled Build Back Better Act appear to be spinning their wheels again. Instead of listening to their detractors and making the necessary changes, ...
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Beware of Pollsters on Taxes
According to POLITICO and numerous other news outlets, top White House advisors remain convinced that pushing policies to make wealthy individuals and corporations start “paying their fair share” is a winning strategy in its own ...
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Taking Manchin at His Word
When the Build Back Better Act (BBB) made its way to the Senate last year, an odd trend emerged: Every time West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin would make a clear statement regarding his position on ...
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BBB Will Make Inflation Worse
Americans are correctly alarmed by the recent spike in prices, while Senator Manchin has made rising prices a key rationale for his opposition to the massive Build Back Better Act (BBB). Both believe the BBB, ...
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SALT Parity Offers Massive Savings for Main Street
With the Build Back Better Act stalled in the Senate, states should resume efforts to enact our SALT Parity legislation this year. The SALT cap appears here to stay, at least through 2025, and the ...
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Amid Record Inflation, Business Community Calls on Congress to End BBB Talks
Today’s Bureau of Labor Statistics report showed inflation surging at its fastest pace in 40 years with the consumer price index increasing 7 percent year over year. Despite these rising prices, lawmakers and the White ...
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Manchin a “No” on BBB
The Build Back Better (BBB) bill would have harmed family businesses, cost jobs, and accelerated the economic consolidation already taking place in this country. It would have been a negative for those states and communities ...
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S-Corp Joins SALT Parity Panel Discussion
Last week, S-Corp President Brian Reardon joined a panel discussion on our SALT Parity efforts. Hosted by Tax Analysts, the webinar sought to explain why these laws are necessary, who benefits, and what effect current ...
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Family Businesses Targeted by BBB
Ways and Means Republicans held a panel discussion on the Build Back Better (BBB) Act’s impact on individually and family-owned businesses yesterday morning, and just in time. Main Street is panicked over the possibility that ...
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Another Reason Main Street Opposes the BBB
The House-passed Build Back Better Act represents an existential threat to many S corporations. Not only would the bill raise their rates to the highest in the OECD, it would impose limitations to deducting their ...
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Winston on Build Back Better
The Biden Administration has attempted to sell its $2 trillion Build Back Better plan, including $540 billion in tax hikes on family businesses, as popular with voters. That’s simply not true. An op-ed published yesterday ...
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BBB Still Harmful to Main Street
Ken Kies is out with an excellent piece today that breaks down how bad of a deal the House-passed Build Back Better Act is for pass-through businesses. As the former Joint Committee on Taxation head ...
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Americans Oppose BBB: New Survey
The House is back and has its sights set on passing the multi-trillion-dollar tax and spending package known as the Build Back Better (BBB) Act. How do voters feel about a 2,400-page bill that targets ...
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Biden Framework Still Targets Family Businesses
Note: the first table shown below has been modified to correct a previous error. A key aspect of the Biden "framework" under consideration in the House is how it targets family businesses with modest incomes ...
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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 17: “Follow the Money”
Our latest podcast guest is Lynn Mucenski-Keck, a Partner at New York-based tax and consulting firm The Bonadio Group and author of an excellent piece in Forbes that recently caught our attention. Lynn walks us ...
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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 16: “The Circular Firing Squad”
On our latest episode we’re joined by Jade West, the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors’ Chief Government Relations Officer and Courtney Titus Brooks, Senior Manager of Federal Relations at the National Federation of Independent Business. Jade ...
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Main Street Highlights Opposition to Framework
S-Corp joined with over 100 trade associations today in urging Congress to reject the White House’s Build Back Better framework, the latest version of Democrats’ multi-trillion-dollar tax and spend plan. This latest iteration replaces the ...
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Forbes Highlights Hit to Pass-Throughs
Lynn Mucenski-Keck, a Partner at the accounting firm The Bonadio Group, has a fantastic piece in Forbes that makes the pass-through case against the framework’s tax increases. “Pass-Through Owners Bear the Hit with Proposed Federal ...
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New EY Employment Numbers and Main Street Resources
Over the past year, S-Corp has attempted to arm its allies on and off the Hill with as many tools and resources as they need to fight the tax hikes moving through Congress. Today, we ...
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A Rate Hike by Any Other Name…Would Still Kill Family Businesses
S-Corp has had about 24 hours to digest the White House “framework” and corresponding legislative text, and the more we read, the worse it gets. For those members worried about raising rates, it’s important to ...
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Assault on Family Businesses Continues
The “framework” released by the White House this morning continues the assault on family-owned businesses. Advertised as a less aggressive plan than the Administration’s Build Back Better (BBB) proposal, the bill would result in higher ...
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Business Community Opposes Grantor Trust / Minority Valuation Changes
This morning, more than 90 trade associations representing millions of individually- and family-owned businesses sounded the alarm on the proposed changes to grantor trust and valuation rules in the Build Back Better Act (H.R. 5376) ...
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M2M Returns, Departs
Like a vampire, the Wyden “mark-to-market” (or M2M) proposal rose from the dead over the weekend in what appeared to be a Hail Mary effort to replace large portions of the House tax hike plan ...
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S-Corp Opposes Grantor Trust Changes
The proposed changes to grantor trusts included in the Build Back Better Act (H.R. 5376) are a serious threat to Main Street employers nationwide. The authors claim these changes would ensure billionaires “pay their fair ...
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Analysis Shows 199A is Essential for Parity
Ken Kies is a former head of Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation and one of Washington’s most respected tax experts. Today he has a succinct and highly persuasive defense of the Section 199A deduction that’s ...
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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 15: “A Lump of Coal in Our Stockings”
Kevin Kuhlman, a Vice President of Federal Relations at NFIB, walks through the results of the organization's latest research, and details the extent to which Main Street businesses have been kneecapped by severe revenue losses, ...
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Where the Jobs Are
The House tax package would hit private companies twice as hard as public C corporations. It would impose marginal rates of 46.4 percent or more on private companies, while taxing public corporations as little as ...
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Nichols Explains 199A in TaxNotes
S Corporation Association advisor and Board member Tom Nichols of Meissner Tierney Fisher and Nichols has published a solid defense of 199A in TaxNotes this week. As we’ve noted previously, the House tax package would ...
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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 14: “Confusion Reigns”
This week, Democrat leadership announced they had agreed to a “framework” on the revenue portion of their $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill. But with moderates and progressives at odds over both the timing and content of ...
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JCT Confirms Assault on Main Street
The distribution tables released Tuesday on Chairman Neal’s tax increase package tell us what we already knew – the Neal bill is an all-out assault on family-owned businesses, together with the thousands of communities and ...
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Neal Draft Targets Main Street
The House Ways and Means Committee on Monday released legislation aimed at paying for the Democrats' $3.5 trillion spending package. Committee members are scheduled to begin marking up the package today and expect to finish ...
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Main Street Responds to Looming Tax Threat
With the House Ways and Means Committee kicking off its portion of the massive, $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill, more than 120 trade associations today voiced their strong opposition to the litany of tax hikes ...
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The Main Street Defense of the 199A Deduction
The Section 199A deduction is under attack. Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden’s Small Business Tax Fairness Act would phase-out the deduction for owners making between $400,000 and $500,000, while critics of the deduction continue to ...
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Legislative Outlook – Hurry Up and Wait?
Having secured passage of their budget resolution last week, House Democrats are wasting no time in assembling the ensuing reconciliation package with tentatively scheduled markups starting as early as Thursday. It’s the start of an ...
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White House Shortchanges Main Street
The recent White House fact sheet on small businesses and tax hikes is highly misleading. It exaggerates the number of small businesses in order to minimize the harm President Biden’s tax hikes will inflict on ...
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Latest ProPublica “Bombshell” Lands with a Thud
This year’s leak of IRS tax returns has turned ProPublica into the accountant’s version of Robin Leach, host of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”, whose exuberant and over-the-top narrative style made him the butt ...
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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 13: “Raising Taxes is Hard…Especially on the Taxpayer”
Jade West, Chief Government Relations Officer at the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, is our latest podcast guest. Jade breaks down the dynamic between the bipartisan infrastructure bill and Democrats’ $3.5 trillion package, reveals which potential ...
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Quick Take on the Budget Resolution
Senate Democrats released their FY 2022 budget resolution this morning. With the bipartisan infrastructure bill scheduled to be voted on early this week, we could see final passage on the budget resolution no later than ...
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Estate Tax Hike Threat to Family Businesses
With the Senate Majority Leader committed to a “dual-track” legislative strategy that includes a partisan budget resolution, Congress will soon be tasked with deciding which revenue raisers to include in a multi-trillion-dollar reconciliation package. A ...
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Webinar Replay: What do Voters Really Think About the Biden Tax Plan?
On July 22, the S Corporation Association hosted a webinar showcasing a recent survey that asked voters about President Biden's tax plan. The results were eye-opening and revealed a remarkable lack of support for the ...
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Biden’s Tax Hikes are Unpopular and Congress Knows It
The Gazette features an op-ed by S Corporation Association President Brian Reardon on how Americans really feel about raising taxes on individually- and family-owned businesses and farms: -- The Senate needs to decide how to ...
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More on the Wyden 199A Bill
S-Corp has had 24 hours to digest the Section 199A bill introduced by Senator Wyden yesterday, and the more we look, the less we like it. Here are some additional thoughts: Not an Expansion Wyden’s ...
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Wyden Bill Targets Main Street
Last month, over 100 trade associations voiced their strong opposition to changes to the Section 199A pass-through deduction. Their message was clear: now, more than ever, businesses across the country are relying on Section 199A ...
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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 12 – “That Pepto Bismol Moment”
Our latest podcast guest is Ryan Ellis, President of the Center for a Free Economy and an IRS enrolled agent. Ryan gives us his take on a proposal to increase IRS funding and create new ...
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California, Minnesota Join the SALT Parity Parade
Yesterday, California became the latest state to adopt our SALT Parity legislation. The reform was included in the state’s budget for the new fiscal year, which is good news for the State’s 600,000 S corporations who, ...
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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 11 – Washington Analysis’ Joe Lieber on the “Second Tax Package”
In our latest episode, Joe Lieber, Director of Research and Political Analyst at Washington Analysis, LLC, gives us his take on the bipartisan infrastructure deal, what a future tax package might look like, and what ...
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Tax Threat Looms Large Despite Bipartisan Deal
Last week’s on, off, and on-again bipartisan deal was confusing, but it did make clear President Biden’s intention to advance a more expansive partisan package regardless of the bipartisan bill’s fate. Work on that expanded ...
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Business Community Rallies to Support Pass-Through Deduction
More than 100 trade associations today voiced their opposition to proposed legislation which would weaken the Section 199A pass-through deduction. The provision is an essential part of the Tax Code, and helps individually- and family-owned ...
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Are Pass-Through Businesses “Audit Privileged”?
At a hearing last week, Finance Chair Ron Wyden stated: More than two out of every three dollars earned by partnerships in this country go to the top one percent of earners. These are sophisticated ...
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SALT Parity Bills Hit Governor’s Desk in CO and IL
Our SALT Parity reform bills continue to roll across the country. Since 2018, 13 states have adopted our parity legislation. Colorado and Illinois, whose legislatures recently approved similar bills, are just a Governor’s signature away from ...
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Revisiting the Outlook for Tax Policy
The Biden administration’s tax proposals pose a triple threat to individually- and family-owned businesses. They raise taxes on Main Street Employers when they earn income, when they sell the business, and when they pass the ...
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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 10 – Tax Notes’ Marty Sullivan Discusses the Treasury’s Green Book, Capital Gains, and DC Hiking Trails
With Treasury’s Green Book hot off the presses, we asked Tax Notes Chief Economist Marty Sullivan to review the ins and outs of the Biden administration’s latest tax proposals – from retroactive capital gains taxes ...
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Give FATCA a Chance
Two months ago, we posted a Wire entitled “Hit and Run Economics” that highlighted a new NBER Working Paper – coauthored by Gabriel Zucman – that claimed the Tax Gap is much larger than previous estimates and ...
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SALT Parity Continues to Roll
More good news to report on the SALT Parity front! Just yesterday, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster signed our parity legislation into law. As a result, more than 300,000 S corporations and partnerships in the ...
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Webinar Recap: Biden Tax Plan and Pass-Through Businesses
Earlier this week, S-Corp President Brian Reardon hosted a webinar for its membership to highlight the threat President Biden’s American Families Plan poses to individually and family-owned businesses. The presentation focused on the “Triple Threat” ...
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The Myth of Beneficial High Tax Rates
The inequality narrative driving tax policy this year is built on three shaky foundations: (1) that the rich have captured all the economic gains in recent years, (2) that Americans support very high tax rates, ...
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Are the Pollsters Wrong on Taxes?
Politico recently ran a story about the soul-searching taking place in the polling community, whose 2020 projections predicted a landslide victory for Joe Biden and an significant expansion of the Democratic majority in the House. ...
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SALT Parity Promises Billions in Main Street Relief
More good news on the SALT Parity front. New York has become the 10th state to adopt our reform legislation while a similar bill is sitting on the desk of the Georgia Governor awaiting his ...
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A Little Reality on the Tax Gap
IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig made news last week when he endorsed a new tax gap estimate from, among others, French economist Gabriel Zucman. We reviewed the Zucman paper here and found it typically wanting – ...
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S-Corp Hosts Tax Day Summit
S-CORP and NFIB hosted their Main Street Tax Day Summit yesterday -- a two-hour virtual event focused exclusively on the tax policy issues facing small and individually- and family-owned businesses. Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), one ...
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A “Modest” Tax Hike? Not Even Close
The Biden Administration’s sales pitch for their proposed business tax hikes goes something like this: Rates were too high prior to 2017 but Republicans overshot the mark and set them too low. Democrats want to ...
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You’re Invited – Main Street Tax Day Summit
This Tax Day, April 15th, join us for a virtual event and hear from business owners and tax experts as they outline the threat the coming tax debate poses to America's Main Street Businesses. The ...
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S Corps for Everyone!
As we previously mentioned, the Senate Budget Committee held a hearing yesterday to discuss various proposals to “make the wealthiest people and largest corporations pay their fair share of taxes.” It was predictably dull and ...
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Hit and Run Economics
Just in time for tomorrow’s Senate Budget Hearing, a new NBER Working Paper – coauthored by Gabriel Zucman and entitled, “Tax Evasion at the Top of the Income Distribution: Theory and Evidence” – was released ...
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199A Essential to Rate Parity
Since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act’s passage at the end of 2017, some have seized on the Section 199A deduction as a “loophole” that stacks the deck in favor of pass-through businesses. We’ve heard ...
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Razorbacks Roll with SALT Parity
We can’t predict victory for the University of Arkansas’s basketball team in March Madness (Seeded 3rd in the South) but the state’s pass-through business owners are already winners, as the state officially became the ninth ...
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Income Inequality and S Corporations
Whether they like it or not, S corporations and other pass-through businesses are at the heart of the income inequality debate that has been raging in economic circles for the past two decades. That’s because the ...
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S-Corp Testifies on Michigan SALT Parity Legislation
S Corporation Association President Brian Reardon testified this week – via Zoom – before the Michigan House of Representatives’ Tax Policy Committee. The subject of the hearing was H.B. 4288, which would permit electing pass-through ...
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Main Street Supports 199A Permanence
More than 80 business groups signed on to support legislation making permanent the 20-percent pass-through deduction (Section 199A). The bill was sponsored by Steve Daines (R-MT) in the Senate and Jason Smith (R-MO) and Henry ...
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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 8 – “Process is as Important!”
Tori Gorman, Policy Director for The Concord Coalition, joins our podcast to discuss the intricacies of the budget reconciliation process, its role in moving the latest Covid relief package, whether policies like a $15 minimum ...
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COVID Bill Signals Tax Hikes to Come
With impeachment over, congressional Democrats are turning their attention to their $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill. House committees spent prior weeks marking up pieces of the bill, which will be consolidated into a single “reconciliation” ...
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Business Community Rallies to Defend NOL Relief
On February 2nd – Groundhog Day, appropriately enough – dozens of Senators and Representatives called on Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to retroactively repeal the net operating loss (NOL) relief included ...
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Bloomberg Is Wrong About Tax Rates
Where does fairness lie? At a time when Main Street is struggling to stay open while Wall Street flies high, you might be surprised that Bloomberg thinks it’s private companies organized as S corporations ...
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S-Corp Supports MN SALT Parity
The Tax Committee of the Minnesota Senate held a hearing today to discuss legislation (S.F. 263) to restore the full SALT deduction for pass-through businesses. If adopted, Minnesota would become the eighth state to enact ...
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New York Joins SALT Parity Effort
The good news on SALT Parity keeps rolling in. Just days after California’s Governor signaled his support, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo followed suit and included our pass-through SALT Parity language in his 2022 fiscal ...
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CA Governor’s Budget Includes SALT Parity
More good news on the pass-through SALT Parity front: California Gavin Newsom has included our SALT Parity proposal in his budget proposal for 2021. This news comes on the heels of IRS Notice 2020-75 that confirmed ...
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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 7 – George Callas on Tax Outlook, Effective Dates for Estate and Capital Gains Taxes, and Super Bowl Prediction
George Callas, Managing Director of Government Affairs and Public Policy at Steptoe, joins the podcast to discuss the tax outlook under President Biden and the new Democratic Congress, including upcoming stimulus debate, health care reforms, ...
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Don’t Sell Out Main Street
Congress is on the cusp of passing a truly bipartisan assistance package to help the families and employers through the last months (yeah vaccines!) of the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of this package, the entire ...
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PPP Tax Treatment on the Line
With Congress poised to adopt a compromise COVID-19 package in the next week, a BIG outstanding issue is how loans forgiven under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) will be taxed. It’s literally a $160 billion ...
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“Wall Street Poised for Win on Money-Laundering Bill in Lame-Duck”
Wall Street is setting records even as millions of Main Street businesses struggle to stay alive, so what’s Congress doing? Sneaking legislation onto the Defense Authorization Act that makes life easier for big New York ...
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Business Community Rallies Against Surprise PPP Tax Hike
Negotiations over the next COVID-19 relief package are in full swing – finally! – and the business community has united around one key must-pass item: Restoring congressional intent and avoiding a $120 billion tax hike ...
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The Washington Post is Wrong About PPP
The Washington Post is reporting on yesterday’s court-ordered PPP loan data dump by the Small Business Administration. In a rush to support a breathless income inequality headline, they forgot to report on the real purpose ...
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S-Corp Protests PPP Loan Forgiveness Form
The Paycheck Protection Program has been one of the Federal government’s most successful responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s effectiveness has been hamstrung from the outset by the SBA and Treasury Department. Today, the ...
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Treasury Blesses SALT Parity Reform
Huge news out of Treasury yesterday – the Department has blessed our SALT Parity reforms. You can read the full Notice here. As Law360 reports: BREAKING: Treasury To Say Pass-through SALT Workarounds OK State and ...
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Stop the Surprise Small-Business Tax Increase
An Op-ed by Christopher Smith, Executive Director of the Parity for Main Street Advisors coalition, ran this morning in the Morning Consult. The Payroll Protection Program enacted this past spring has helped millions of employers ...
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Tax Outlook Under a Possible Democratic Sweep
On September 22nd, S-Corp hosted a Zoom briefing entitled “Tax Outlook under a Possible Democratic Sweep” featuring George Callas, Managing Director, Government Affairs at Steptoe Johnson LLP, and Brian Reardon, President of the S Corporation ...
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Priorities for Reopening Main Street
The Commerce Department last week revised its 2nd Quarter GDP estimates showing the economy shrunk by nearly one-third. In a $22 trillion economy, that translates into nearly $2 trillion in lost wages, profits, retirement savings, ...
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Avoiding a $100 Billion Tax Hike on Main Street
As the Administration negotiates with Congress over the next round of COVID-19 relief, here’s a simple way they can help Main Street businesses to the tune of $100 billion plus… just do what Congress intended. ...
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Senate Amendment Targets Private Businesses
The Senate this week will debate an amendment to require private companies to annually report the personal information of their owners to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) at the Department of Treasury, or face ...
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Talking Taxes In a Truck Episode 6 – Doug Badger on the Coronavirus, Health Savings Accounts, Florida, and the Phillies
Doug Badger, former Deputy Assistant to the President and misguided Phillies fan, talks COVID-19, what needs to happen for the economy to reopen, and the prospects for baseball to return in our latest “Talking Taxes ...
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NOL-Loss Limitation Relief Support Building
Advocates defending the CARES Act NOL-Loss Limitation relief had a busy week. First, more than 75 national and local trade groups signed a letter in favor of keeping the relief intact. The broad number of ...
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Treasury Addresses 4960 Shortcomings – More Work Needed
When Treasury released its initial Section 4960 guidance last year (Notice 2019-09), S-Corp warned the rules would force many family businesses to dissolve their related charities and/or private foundations to avoid the new tax. Those ...
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The truth about business tax relief in the CARES Act
S-Corp has a defense of the CARES Act NOL/Loss Limitation rules in today's Washington Examiner. The piece begins: For weeks, we’ve heard that the net operating loss and loss limitation relief included in the CARES ...
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Talking Taxes In a Truck Episode 5 – David Winston on Where the Coronavirus is Taking Us
David Winston, President of the Winston Group, a super smart strategic policy and research firm based in Washington DC, says there are three phases to the COVID-19 response. Which one are we in now? Find out ...
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More Business Community Support for COVID-19 Reforms
The Main Street Employers coalition today endorsed legislation scheduled to voted on in the House of Representatives tomorrow. The bill, the Paycheck Protection Program Flexibility Act, was introduced by Representatives Dean Phillips (D-MN) and Chip ...
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Business Community Rallies Around Paycheck Protection Program
One hundred and twenty-seven national trade groups sent a letter today to Congressional and Administrative leaders asking them to quickly enact three key improvements to the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP): Eliminate the unnecessary 75/25 rule; ...
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HEROES Act Kicks Businesses When They Are Down
House leadership released their HEROES Act yesterday with a plan to vote on it Friday. The bill includes an eye-popping $3 trillion in assistance to families, businesses, non-profits, and governments. One item that stands alone ...
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More on NOL and Loss Limitation Relief
Allowing businesses to use losses to offset income earned in prior years is a longstanding anti-recession policy with solid bipartisan support. It was adopted after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, after Hurricane Katrina, and again following ...
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Main Street Support for Paycheck Protection Loans
More than 200 national and state-based trade groups wrote to congressional leadership today calling on Congress to increase funding for Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. That program was authorized by the CAREs Act last month ...
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Washington Post Supports “Recession Bombs”
Is the loss limitation relief in the CAREs Act an unwarranted giveaway, as claimed by the Washington Post this week? That’s a big “N-O.” As others have noted, this relief prevents the "recession bombs" of ...
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Talking Taxes In a Truck Episode 4 – Capital Alpha on the Coronavirus Response
Where are we headed on COVID-19? Find out by listening to our latest “Talking Taxes in a Truck” podcast featuring James Lucier, Managing Director at Capital Alpha Partners, one of DC’s top strategic policy research ...
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S-Corp Member Call: Policy Response to COVID-19
On March 30, Tom Nichols and Brian Reardon held an S-Corp Member call covering essential parts of the Phase II and Phase III bills passed by Congress in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including: The ...
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Economic Solutions to COVID-19 Beginning to Emerge
It appears Washington is coalescing around a set of policies to help families and businesses while the economy is effectively shut down. California’s “stay home” order is illustrative of the challenge – how do businesses ...
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Main Street Response to COVID-19
Yesterday, over 100 business groups wrote to the Congress and the Administration requesting that the response to the economic crisis confronting us is on the same scale as steps being taken to respond to the ...
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Talking Taxes In a Truck Episode 3 – Coronavirus Response Update
Did you miss Saint Patrick’s Day? We did too. It isn’t even mentioned in our third podcast where we talk to Jim Capretta, former OMB official and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Topics ...
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Coronavirus and Main Street
How the coronavirus plays out in the public health sphere is anybody’s guess, but its current progress all but demands a response from Congress. What might that look like? Here’s what some of the experts ...
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SALT Parity Update
Lots of progress on the SALT Parity front to report! As readers know, S-Corp and the Parity for Main Street Employers coalition has advocated for the restoration of the federal SALT deduction to businesses organized ...
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Talking Taxes In a Truck Episode 2 – SALT Parity Update
Got some time waiting for that new Hillary Clinton podcast? We've got you covered. S-Corp President Brian Reardon talks pass-through SALT parity and the recent “Steiner” Utah Supreme Court decision with Bruce Ely, Partner and ...
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Brookings and Progressivity
We interrupted our impeachment viewing last week for a Brookings Institute briefing exploring various ways the Congress could raise taxes. A book of revenue raising recommendations accompanying the briefing weighed in at a hefty 368 ...
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Our Chairman’s Annual Letter
Dear S-CORP Member: The S Corporation Association recently surveyed voters and asked them how much private companies and other taxpayers should pay in taxes every year? Almost without exception, the responses were consistent, reasonable and ...
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Video on Main Street Employers’ Briefing
Video on Main Street Employers’ Briefing In case you missed it, S-Corp has posted video of its October briefing on Main Street tax issues on its website. The briefing, which took place in the ...
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Main Street Responds to House SALT Bill
Yesterday, the Main Street Employers coalition sent a letter to House tax writers raising concerns with their plan to provide temporary relief from the SALT deduction cap by raising the top tax rate applied to ...
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Long-Term Tax Policy Outlook
Whoever claimed there’s not a “dime’s worth of difference” between the political parties clearly was not referring to American politics in 2020. For tax policy alone, the difference is in the trillions. On one hand, ...
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S Corps and Income Inequality
Much of today’s tax policy debate is premised on the notion that income inequality is bad and getting worse. Economists Piketty and Saez have published numerous papers making this case (here, and here), and Saez ...
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EY on Tax Parity
EY has published a new study commissioned by the S Corporation Association entitled “Large S Corporations and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: The economic footprint of the pass-through sector and the impact of the ...
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Wealth Taxes Pose Existential Threat to Private Businesses
The Peterson Institute held a “Combating Inequality” event last week that included a vigorous debate over wealth taxes. The heavyweight match between Emmanuel Saez – the leading advocate for wealth taxes these days – and ...
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Main Street Hill Briefing
The Parity for Main Street Employers coalition and the S Corporation Association will host a Hill lunch briefing at noon on October 24th in the Kennedy Caucus Room (SR-325). The briefing is open to Hill ...
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Grading the TCJA, Two Years Later
The American Enterprise Institute has a new“Trump Tax Reform Blog” series on its website. Over the next month, tax policy folks from both sides will weigh in on the reform and whether it’s working. You ...
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Perception v. Reality on Tax Rates
Here’s a conundrum. A recent poll revealed that 76 percent of Americans support increasing taxes on the “wealthy,” while sixty-one percent support the wealth tax proposed by Senator Elizabeth Warren, which is like an income ...
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Failure of High Marginal Rates
Earlier this year, the Congressional Budget Office produced a report reviewing tax rates on labor income since 1962 that includes some important lessons for tax policy folks. The first lesson is that nothing replaces a ...
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Treasury on 199A Guardrails
Remember this JCT chart from earlier this year? It garnered lots of attention and called into question how the 199A pass-through deduction was structured. If only 9 percent of all pass-through income was disqualified from ...
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S-Corp Member Survey 2019
S-Corp sent its members a new survey this Spring. The goal was to follow up the survey we did just after tax reform was enacted to see how things had evolved. Now that our members ...
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The Myth of Corporate Decline
The visual economist issued another great chart last month, this time showing the largest public companies by market cap. Our first reaction is, wait, Microsoft is number one? When did that happen? All the focus ...
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Joe Biden’s S-Corp
What is it about Presidential candidates and S corporations? First John Edwards made the practice of abusing the S corporation structure infamous back in 2004. Then we learned Newt Gingrich did the same thing when ...
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Progress on S-Corp SALT Parity Efforts
The House Select Revenue Subcommittee held a hearing today entitled “How Recent Limitations to the SALT Deduction Harm Communities, Schools, First Responders, and Housing Values.” Missing from the list are Main Street Employers, many of ...
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S-Corp Comments on Section 4960 Excise Tax
The S Corporation Association sent comments to the Department of Treasury today raising concerns that recent guidance it published has the potential to impose the new, Section 4960 excise tax onto private operating companies. The ...
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Tax Foundation Needs to Fix Their Map
The Tax Foundation has updated some of their data on pass-through businesses last week, including this nice map with state-by-state data on the percentage of jobs from pass-throughs, which is helpful. As before, it shows ...
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Section 199A Deduction Needed to Provide Pass-Throughs Tax Parity with C Corporations
A new presentation on the Section 199A deduction from the Joint Committee on Taxation has gotten people’s attention, particularly this slide: The slide prompted Senator Ron Wyden, the Ranking Member on the Senate Finance Committee, to ...
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The Legal Case for Pass-Through SALT Parity
Last week, Bloomberg published a report that got our attention. Entitled, “IRS May Knock down New York, Connecticut SALT Workarounds,” the article says the IRS is “likely” to issue regulations that invalidate SALT workarounds. The ...
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S-Corp Submits Comments Defending Manufacturers
Today, the S Corporation Association submitted its formal comments to the IRS on the pending Section 163(j) rules. Section 163(j) would impose the new, 30 percent cap on interest deductions as part of the Tax Cuts ...
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199A Pass-Through Deduction Rules Finalized
Treasury issued the final rules on 199A earlier this month. You can read the rules and accompanying guidance here: 199A Final Rule Revenue Procedure 2019-11 Notice 2019-07 You can also read a terrific “how does ...
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S-Corp Testifies on 199A
Board Member and Advisory Committee Chair Tom Nichols represented S-Corp in Tuesday’s IRS hearing on Section 199A. Tom was one of 26 witnesses to testify. As Tax Notes summarized: Thomas J. Nichols of Meissner, Tierney, ...
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More Tax Reform Comments!
Everything has its season, and for tax reform, this is the season of sending comments to Treasury. This week, the S Corporation Association submitted comments on Treasury’s proposed rules implementing the so-called “toll charge” repatriation ...
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S-Corp Comments on Proposed 199A Rules
The S Corporation Association today submitted comments on Treasury’s proposed rules implementing the new, 20-percent pass-through deduction. S-Corp readers know the 20-percent deduction was designed to preserve rate parity between pass-through businesses and the new, ...
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Proposed 199A Rules Released
It’s not late Friday afternoon, so why is Treasury releasing important new rules on the pass-through deduction? We’re not sure, but we like it! The rules themselves look pretty good too, and our members’ initial ...
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Pass-Through Parity Briefing
The S Corporation Association participated in a Hill briefing Tuesday highlighting new work for Ernst & Young on the challenge of establishing parity for pass-through taxation. The analysis, authored by Robert Carroll of EY, focused ...
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S-Corp’s New York SALT Comments
Today the S Corporation Association submitted comments to the New York Department Taxation and Finance on their proposed SALT fix for partnerships. Following hard on the heels of the new Connecticut SALT fix, New York ...
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Tax Breaks for Job Creators
Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) got itself into a lather the other day noting that the new, 20-percent deduction for pass-through businesses will reduce revenues by twice what the federal government spends on ...
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Mass S-Corp Conversions? Not Yet, But Wait ‘til the Deduction Expires
The headline is eye-grabbing, but what does it mean? A new study by Penn Wharton predicts a “mass conversion” of pass-through businesses to C corporation under the new tax law. Specifically, the study finds that ...
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More Debate over SALT
The same week our Parity for Main Street Employers group released its model pass-through SALT reform bill, critics of state SALT fixes fired a couple salvos that are worth noting. First, the IRS announced it ...
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Connecticut Moves on SALT Fix for Pass-Throughs
When the dust settled on last year’s tax overhaul, pass-through businesses were confronted with new rules for deducting State and local taxes – if they paid the taxes at the entity level, they could deduct ...
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Senate Reviews Tax Bill
Yesterday’s Finance Committee hearing on the tax bill was interesting, if only to remind viewers that it’s way too early to pass final judgement on the tax overhaul. Not that several Committee members didn’t try. ...
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Making States More Main Street Business Friendly
(For clarity purposes, this write-up focuses on S corporations. The arguments and policy conclusions largely apply to partnerships as well.) Like C corporations, S corporations are subject to state and local income taxes imposed on ...
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Business Community Rallies around Aggregation
Treasury has its hands full with the new tax overhaul. As technical comments from the US Chamber, AICPA and S-Corp make clear, the list of necessary guidance for the business community is long and growing. ...
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S Corporation Association Member Survey
2018 will be a pivotal year for Main Street businesses and the trade groups that represent them. The 20-percent pass-through deduction is helpful to those businesses that qualify, but it’s availability is limited by income, ...
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S-Corp at Brookings—Making the Case for Tax Parity
On Tuesday the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center held a forum on the new tax bill entitled “The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: The new business tax landscape.” The forum focused on two of the more ...
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Tax Reform Overview
From the corporate perspective, the early returns on the new tax bill are promising. The markets certainly like the lower corporate tax rate and dozens of public companies have announced tax-cut related investments, wage hikes, ...
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Our Chairman’s 2018 New Year Message
Dear S-CORP Member: Well that was a roller coaster ride. In just ten weeks, Congress went from being nowhere on tax reform to seeing a massive rewrite of the Tax Code enacted into law. It ...
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S-Corp Thanks its Champions
With tax reform passing the Congress in the next few hours, S-Corp sent a note of thanks to those members of the Senate – Johnson, Daines and Inhofe – who stood up for Main Street ...
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S-Corp Comments to Tax Reform Conferees
General: Neither the House nor the Senate bills live up to the promise of the 25-percent pass-through rate proposed in the Framework. The Senate bill doesn’t even have a pass-through rate. Pass-through businesses employ the ...
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Pass-Through Community Letter to Finance Committee
Yesterday 42 Main Street trade groups, including the National Beer Wholesalers Association, the Independent Community Bankers of America, the Associated Builders and Contractors, and the S Corporation Association sent a letter to Chairman Hatch calling ...
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Flaws in the Tax Foundation’s Review
The Tax Foundation is out with a new write-up called, “Are Pass-Through Businesses Treated Fairly Under the Senate Version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act?” that has a chart showing the top rate applying ...
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S-Corp Concerns with Senate Tax Reform Bill
Top Line The Framework and rhetoric leading up to its release indicated that Senate Leadership and the Finance Committee were committed to treating the millions of companies organized as pass-through businesses fairly in relation to ...
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House Tax Reform and S Corps, Part II
The Ways and Means Committee is likely to wrap its tax reform markup today. The bill presents many challenges to pass-through businesses that are unlikely to be fixed today. Here are some quick hits on ...
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House Bill & S Corps
The House tax reform bill to be considered this week has a headline top rate of 25 percent for S corporations and other pass-through businesses, but in many cases the real rate is significantly higher. ...
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S-CORP Response to H.R. 1
WASHINGTON, D.C. – S-CORP has been a vocal supporter of the House Republican Blueprint and the unified tax reform framework. We have serious concerns though about the pass-through provisions in the tax reform draft released ...
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Can Main Street Businesses Just Convert? No!
Nor Should They. Here’s Why. If tax reform results in a top C corporation rate that is far below the top rate offered to pass through businesses, couldn’t pass-through businesses just switch to C status ...
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Pass Through Fallacy and Responses
Marty Sullivan has an interesting post in Forbes this week on the pass through rate challenge, arguing that S corporation shareholders who don’t want to see their taxes go up are being greedy. He says: ...
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Defense of the “Framework’s” Pass Through Tax Rate
The class warfare debate over the tax reform “Framework” has shifted its focus to the pass through business provisions. John Harwood has a typically one-sided piece on the CNBC website, which includes this paragraph: "There ...
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Treasury Pulls Harmful 2704 Rules
It’s official – the Treasury Department today released a new report announcing they will withdraw the family business valuation rules that had threatened the family business community for more than a year! Today’s announcement is ...
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Framework Hits Key Notes
The Big Six released their “framework” today and it’s pretty good. You can read all eight pages here, but key provisions for Main Street businesses include: A new, lower pass through tax rate of 25 ...
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Pass Through Tax Rates and the 70/30 Rule
Axios reported over the weekend that the tax plan to be rolled out by the “Big Six” Wednesday will call for a 35 percent top rate for individuals, 25 percent for pass through businesses, and ...
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Tax Reform Plan Forthcoming
After months of meetings, the so-called Big Six are preparing to release some sort of summary of their work the weekend of the 23rd. The Ways & Means Republicans have a retreat that weekend, and ...
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S-Corp Comments on 2704
Monday was the close of the comment period for Treasury Notice 2017-38, and the S Corporation Association joined several other trade groups in submitting our final comments on the pending Section 2704 rules, including our study highlighting ...
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Letter Leaves Pass Through Employers Behind
For seven years, your S-Corp team has repeated the same mantra for tax reform – tax all income once, tax it at similar reasonable rates, and then leave it alone. If Congress wants to make ...
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Tax Reform Statement & Pass Through Taxes
Just in time for the August recess, the House, Senate and the White House released a joint statement yesterday on the status of their tax reform talks and their plans moving forward. You can read ...
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S-Corp Submits Comments
The S Corporation Association submitted the following comments to the Senate Finance Committee today as part of the Committee’s request for input: The United States is unique among developed countries in the emphasis it places ...
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Business Community Rallies Behind 3.8% NIIT Repeal
The Business Committee came out in force today in opposition to the Obamacare 3.8 percent Net Investment Income Tax (NIIT) and, more to the point, in support of repealing this harmful tax as part of ...
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S-Corp Testifies
S-Corp President Brian Reardon testified yesterday before the Senate Small Business Committee in a hearing entitled “Tax Reform: Removing Barriers to Small Business Growth.” As Inside Sources reported: The hearing primarily focused on ensuring small ...
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Pass Thru Rates & Enforcement
As Congress returns to tackle tax reform, one area of consensus continues to be ensuring that Main Street is treated fairly by establishing a new, low top rate on pass through businesses. But separating business ...
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Ways & Means Takes on Tax Reform
The House Ways and Means Committee began its focus on tax reform yesterday with a hearing on economic growth. The hearing, entitled “How Tax Reform Will Grow Our Economy and Create Jobs” featured four company ...
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2704 and Family Businesses
Remember the Obama Administration’s family-business valuation rules? They were proposed back in August and resulted in such a backlash from the family business community that Treasury received nearly 29,000 comments during the 90-day comment period. ...
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Trump To Weigh In On Taxes
So what do we know about the Administration’s tax announcement scheduled for tomorrow? First, we expect the announcement will be limited to principles and a couple key proposals – not a full blown tax reform ...
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Business Community Support for S Corp Mod
As we reported last week, a bipartisan group of tax writers in the House and Senate have introduced this year’s version of the S Corporation Modernization Act. The bills (H.R. 1696 & S. 711) are ...
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S Corp Mod Bills Introduced!
Good news! The 2017 version of the “S Corporation Modernization Act” has been introduced the House and the Senate. Led by Senators Thune (R-SD) and Cardin (D-MD) and Representatives Reichert (R-WA) and Kind (D-WI), the ...
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Brady Plan and Pass Throughs
The Wall Street Journal featured S-Corp Board member Clarene Law last week in a story focused on the new tax rates for pass through businesses in the House tax reform plan. As the story notes: ...
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The Tax Foundation Gets it Right (Sort Of)
The Tax Foundation published its annual piece on pass through businesses this week, and as usual, there’s lots of great material in there. To begin, the Foundation updates its numbers on pass through employment and ...
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S-CORP Testifies at IRS
Last month’s elections so dramatically changed the outlook for tax policy in 2017 that we’re still trying to catch up. The outlook for the proposed 2704 regulations in particular has done an about-face, going from ...
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The Short, Unhappy Life of the 2704 Valuation Rules
Do family businesses still need to worry about the 2704 valuation rules? These rules have consumed the attention and resources of family businesses nationwide since they were first proposed back in August. While we have ...
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Tax Reform Front and Center
Last week’s election changed everything in the tax world, from who’s running Treasury to the prospects for tax reform. We’re still trying to get our heads around all the implications, but the short summary is ...
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2704 Comment Period Closes Big
The official comment period on the proposed Section 2704 regulations closed yesterday, with nearly 10,000 comments filed! You can review those comments here, but a cursory review this morning made clear they were nearly unanimous ...
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S-Corp Submits Valuation Comments
Yesterday, the S Corporation Association submitted its formal comments to the IRS on the pending Section 2704 valuation rules. You can read all 15 pages of comments here, but the basic message of the submission ...
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S Corps Exempted from 385 Rules
Here’s a bit of good news for the S corporation community – Treasury has exempted them from the newly published rules under Section 385. This is a huge relief to the S corporation community. The ...
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Latest on 385
It looks like the IRS and Treasury have made their revisions to the proposed 385 regulations and are just waiting for sign-off from the White House. According to our friends at Politico: Tax lawyers just ...
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Business Community Rallies
Thousands of family businesses signed a letter this week calling on the Department of the Treasury to withdraw proposed regulations that target family businesses for sharply higher gift and estate taxes. Getting that many private ...
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Response to Valuation Rules Continues
The Main Street Employers coalition sent a letter to congressional tax writers yesterday opposing the proposed rules on estate valuations and calling on Congress to weigh in with Treasury on the issue. From Politico: The ...
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Business Community Responds to Valuation Rules
Business Valuation Wire reports there has been a sharp spike in the number of families asking valuation professionals to analyze what the newly proposed rules out of Treasury mean to their business succession plans: Valuation ...
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More on the Valuation Rules
The August recess has given the S-Corp team a little more time to review the pending valuations rules out of Treasury. Recall that 23 years after the IRS surrendered and stopped using their flawed “family ...
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Pass Through Loopholes?
The pass through mantra, supported by more than 100 national business trade groups, is simple – tax business income once, tax it when its earned, tax it at the same reasonable top rate, and then ...
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Treasury Hits Family Businesses!
The verdict is in, and Treasury’s proposed rules on estate tax valuations of family-owned businesses are broad – very broad indeed. They are, simply put, a direct assault on America’s family-owned businesses. Here’s the take ...
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Treasury’s Proposed Minority Discount Rules Finally Released
The regulatory assault continues – this time in the form of newly proposed rules out of Treasury to increase valuations – and taxes – on family businesses when they are transferred as part of an ...
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S-Corp Mod Bills Introduced!
Good news on a hot day in July! The 2016 version of the “S Corporation Modernization Act” has been introduced the House and the Senate. Led by Senators Thune (R-SD) and Cardin (D-MD) and Representatives ...
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S-Corp Submits 385 Comments
The debate over Section 385 continues. The comment period ends today, and we sent in our comment letter along with the rest of the business community. As we noted in our submission, the 385 regulations ...
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House Tax Blueprint
You have to feel for the House tax writers. They spent months putting together a plan to reform the tax code and now all anybody wants to talk about is Brexit and Section 385. That’s ...
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More on 385
S-Corp continues its efforts to educate policymakers about the pending Section 385 rules and the harm they will cause to domestic employers and American jobs starting…well, now. That’s the dirty little secret about the 385 ...
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S-Corp on Section 385
The S Corporation Association has sent a letter to the two congressional tax committees asking them to support efforts to pull Treasury’s proposed section 385 regulations released back on April 4th. The comment period for ...
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Senate Finance Hearing on Corporate Integration
Remember the pass-through mantra for tax reform? All business income should be taxed once, it should be taxed at the same top rate, and then we should leave it alone! Well, that mantra was on ...
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Reichert, Buchanan Present S Corp Tax Relief to Ways and Means
As our members know, S-Corp wears two hats when it comes to advocacy – one is defensive where we protect S corporations from bad tax policy. The other is proactive and seeks to improve the ...
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Treasury’s Section 385 Regs and S Corps
The business community is beginning to recognize that Treasury’s new Section 385 regulations published on April 4th have a much broader reach than anybody thought. S corporations in particular need to pay attention. How broad ...
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Rate Parity Bill Introduced!
For five years, the S Corporation Association and its allies have asked tax writers to pursue business tax reform that taxes all business income just once and at the same, reasonable top rates. That’s the ...
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More on Corporate Integration
Lots of chatter on corporate tax reform last week. First, Finance Committee Chair Orrin Hatch gave a speech on the Senate floor making clear that only comprehensive changes to our tax code would help to ...
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Administration Updates its Corporate Tax Reform Proposal
Lost in all the hoopla over the Treasury’s new inversion policies was the accompanying update to their corporate tax reform outline. You can read the whole 30-page document here, but the bottom line is that ...
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New Name, Same Mission
It’s a new year, so we’ve rolled out the latest version of our pass-through business principles. As in previous years, the letter hits on the three key elements necessary for any successful tax reform plan ...
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S-Corp in WSJ
S-Corp President Brian Reardon and Advisory Committee Chair Tom Nichols made the pass-through tax reform case in the pages of the Wall Street Journal on Friday. The core message of the piece is that businesses ...
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More on the Administration’s Budget
We weren’t the only ones who noticed the President’s budget for 2017 is bad for Main Street Employers. Numerous outlets ran stories (CQ, Bloomberg, and Morningstar) focusing on the negative impact the President’s tax proposals ...
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Administration Budget
The President’s budget is out and, as usual, it includes a number of retread proposals to hike taxes on pass-through businesses, including the Buffett Tax and a big hike in the capital gains tax. We’ve ...
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Permanent Built-In Gains Relief Passes Congress!
After fifteen years of advocacy, one stimulus bill and three extenders, permanent built-in gains relief is just one short ride down Pennsylvania Avenue away from becoming law! That’s because the Senate just voted 65-33 on ...
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Permanent Built-In Gains in Extender Package
Negotiators agreed to a package of tax and a package of spending provisions last night, and the big news (pun intended) is that the 5-year recognition period for built-in gains (BIG) – something S-Corp has ...
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S-CORP Testifies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qcQzgezwO0&t=112m6s Ahead of the extender deadline, S-Corp was on the Hill testifying yesterday that Congress needs to act to end the extender roller coaster and make permanent these provisions, including the built-in gains ...
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Extenders – The Post-Thanksgiving Update
Lots of noise on the extender front, but is there progress being made? Hard to tell. Last week, a list of potential items made the rounds that would have made some provisions permanent, some extended ...
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Legislative Update: The Pre-Thanksgiving Edition
We’re tracking two key tax items at the moment – tax extenders and international reform. Here’s our outlook for both. For extenders, Congress has once again ignored the needs of American businesses by delaying adoption ...
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Brady Elected Chairman of Ways and Means
On Wednesday, the Republican Steering Committee tapped Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) to succeed Speaker Ryan as the committee’s chairman. Both he and his challenger, Rep. Pat Tiberi (R-OH), are strong allies of S corporations and ...
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What’s On Deck for the Rest of 2015
Speaker Boehner had a three step plan at the beginning of October: 1) Resign at the end of the month; 2) Clear the legislative decks of controversial and difficult items; 3) Turn the gavel over ...
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Legislative Update
It’s been a busy week. First, Ways & Means Chair Paul Ryan yielded to a tremendous amount of peer pressure and agreed to run for Speaker. The Republican Conference vote to replace departing Speaker John ...
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S-CORP News Clips
Small Business Confidence Survey You’ll remember back in June we profiled three small business surveys from NFIB, Wells Fargo/Gallup, and Thumbtack. Together, these surveys, with different sample populations and varying methods, provide the most complete ...
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GOP Leadership Fight Will Continue, Implications for Tax Reform
Well that didn’t go as planned. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s surprising withdrawal from the Speaker’s race Thursday put an end to John Boehner’s carefully orchestrated plan to pass a raft of difficult bills this ...
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Legislative Update and Treasury’s Effective Rate Study
Legislative Outlook, Post-Boehner Announcement Speaker Boehner’s announcement that he plans to retire at the end of October has implications for tax policy and next year’s spending levels. Here’s our outlook for both. International Tax Reform: ...
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S-Corp Comments on Innovation Box
The S Corporation Association submitted comments today to Ways and Means Committee Members Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA) and Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA), sponsors of the draft “Innovation Promotion Act of 2015.” As you’ll recall, the ...
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Innovative Pass Thrus and an Update on Valuations
Innovative Pass Thrus Last month’s release of the “innovation box” proposal by Ways and Means Committee Members Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA) and Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA) started us thinking, “Exactly how much innovating do S ...
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Recap of a Busy Week in Tax Policy
Patent/Innovation Box Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA) and Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA) unveiled their proposed “innovation box” legislation aimed at keeping intellectual property registered in the United States. The bill would lower the rate on qualified ...
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Highway Funding and Tax Extenders Update
Highway Debate Continues Last week, we reported on the House’s adoption of a highway trust fund (HTF) extension through December. This extension is the first step of Chairman Paul Ryan’s plan to combine a longer ...
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Senate Finance Working Groups Release Reports
The Senate Finance Working Groups reports are done and publicly available! Many congrats to the Committee members and their staff for continuing the progress on tax reform. You can check out the reports here. The ...
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S Corp News Clips
More on Tax Reform We've previously commented on Chairman Paul Ryan's desire to do as much as he can this Congress to lay the groundwork for comprehensive tax reform in 2017. Now, in the Wall Street ...
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S Corp Modernization Introduced!
Just in time for our annual Board meeting, S-Corp Champions Dave Reichert (R-WA) and Ron Kind (D-WI) introduced legislation to improve the rules governing S corporations! Entitled the S Corporation Modernization Act of 2015 (HR ...
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S Corp News Clips
Family Business Valuation under Attack? In a development that could harm valuations of S corporations and other family-owned businesses, the Treasury Department appears poised to issue guidance limiting discounts under section 2704. Such action has ...
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Courts Overvalue S Corps
For over 15 years, the IRS has discriminated against S Corporations when it comes to estate taxes and other matters where business valuation plays a role and, for 15 years, S Corp has been fighting ...
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Big Week for S-Corp
It's been a busy and productive week for team S-Corp! First, we had two S-Corp representatives testifying before congressional committees on Wednesday. Second, with the Finance Committee working group comments due on April 15th, we ...
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Kleinbard on Tax Reform
Edward Kleinbard, the former Director of the Congressional Budget Office, has a piece in Bloomberg on the prospects of corporate tax reform that makes some interesting points worth considering. To start, he argues that Congress ...
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House Passes S-Corp Reforms!
Last week was a good one for S corporations! On Friday, the House voted 272 to 142 to adopt long-time S corporation Association priorities – the built-in gains tax relief and the charitable contribution basis ...
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Should Main Street Businesses Elect C Corp Status? No!
The idea that corporate-only tax reform isn’t so bad because Main Street businesses can elect C corporation status has been argued for years. But should Congress reduce the corporate tax rate with the expectation that ...
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S Corp Provisions on House Floor
Last Friday, longtime S-CORP allies Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA) and Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI) introduced two pieces of legislation – H.R. 629 and H.R. 630 – to extend tax provisions critical to America’s 4.6 million ...
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Mark to Market for Dead People
The President’s budget is out and, as we have in the past, we will start with a disclaimer. Congress requires the President to issue a budget every year, and every year the President (regardless of ...
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A Tale of Two Speeches
The president gave his State of the Union speech last Tuesday, while his Secretary of Treasury spoke to the Brookings Institution the following morning. The president didn’t mention tax reform, whereas Lew devoted nearly his ...
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Tax Foundation on Pass-Through Businesses
The Tax Foundation today released a great paper outlining the state of American pass-through businesses – S corps, partnerships, and sole props – and how the tax code currently treats those companies. According to the ...
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Ryan Rolls Out New Ways & Means Committee
Main Street business tax treatment was a big theme during the Ways & Means Committee’s first hearing of the year. Its purpose was to look at the state of the economy, but key members kept ...
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Extenders Clear the Senate
Although it’s not ideal and expires in just two weeks, we are glad to report that the tax extenders bill finally passed in the Senate last night by a 76-16 vote and is on its ...
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Extenders Update
The tax extenders front has been busy in the last couple days. First, there was the rumor Monday that negotiators were close to a deal. Tuesday, details emerged of a $450 billion package mixing ten ...
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Extenders and Immigration
Last week, we did a post-election analysis that highlighted the broad implications of the new Republican Congress. A return to "regular order" and increased legislative activity overall, including in the tax space, was our basic ...
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S-CORP Hosts 2014 Midterm Elections Webinar
On Thursday, November 6th, the S Corporation Association held a webinar to go over the 2014 midterm elections results and sort out the implications they'll have on legislation and S-CORP's priorities going forward. To watch ...
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S Corporations Hit by Tax Hikes
Our friends at McGladrey LLP have a new survey out of mid-market firms showing just how hard those companies have been hit by the tax rate hikes championed by President Obama and his allies in ...
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Lew Punts on Tax Reform, Inversions
Secretary Lew gave his tax reform speech this morning. It lasted maybe 10 minutes and he didn’t take questions afterwards. Given the buzz the speech’s announcement created on Wall Street and in tax policy circles, ...
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Inversions and Tax Reform
Yesterday’s letter from Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on inversions is just the latest headline on an issue that has dominated the tax discussion ever since Pfizer proposed to merge with AstraZeneca back in May. As ...
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Highway Bill, Extenders, and the Tax Outlook for the Rest of the Year
The pending debate over highway spending has tax implications and the pass-through business community should pay attention. The Highway Trust Fund will run out of money in the next couple weeks and both the Senate ...
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House Passes S-Corp Reforms!
It’s a big day for S corporations! Earlier today, the House voted to adopt HR 4453, the S Corporation Permanent Relief Act of 2014, by a count of 263 to 155. The bill, sponsored by ...
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Business Community Comes Out in Support of S Corp Reforms…
A broad coalition of business groups came out in support of S corporation reforms today, writing to House of Representatives in support of HR 4453, the S Corporation Permanent Relief Act of 2014. The House ...
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BIG Tax Relief on House Floor
It’s a big week for S corporations! The House is scheduled to vote on several small business tax items, including permanently higher section 179 expensing limits and S corporation modernization legislation too! The S corporation ...
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Thune Files S-CORP Amendment
More good news on the tax front. Senator John Thune (R-SD) has filed an amendment making permanent two key S corporation reforms. Joined by Senators Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Pat Roberts (R-KS), the Thune amendment ...
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Ways & Means Votes for Permanent BIG Relief!
Earlier today, the House Ways and Means Committee voted out a number of business-friendly tax provisions, including two S corporation reforms introduced by Reps. Dave Reichert (R-WA) and Ron Kind (D-WI). You can click here ...
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Extenders in Play
Tax extenders have gone from the back bench to a starring role in recent weeks. The latest news is that the Ways and Means Committee will hold a markup next Tuesday where they will consider ...
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Reps. Reichert & Kind Introduce Pro-S Corporation Bills
Yesterday, Congressmen Dave Reichert (R-WA) and Ron Kind (D-WI) introduced HR 4454 and HR 4453 to make permanent two tax provisions that are important to the S corporation community. The first bill provides a permanent ...
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S-CORP Testifies on Built In Gains
Long-time S Corporation Association advisor Jim Redpath testified Tuesday before the Ways and Means Committee in support, among other items, of making permanent the 5-year recognition period for built in gains. The hearing focused on ...
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Moving on Extenders
Extenders are back in play in the House and Senate. Finance Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) plans to release his package Monday, with amendments due on Tuesday and markup to begin on Wednesday. Details of the ...
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S-Corp Payroll Tax Hike Re-Emerges
Both the Camp discussion draft and the President’s budget include provisions to expand the application of payroll taxes to S corporation income. The White House proposal is an expanded version of efforts that failed in ...
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S-CORP Testifies on Nexus Issues
The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing Wednesday on the Business Activity Tax Simplification Act of 2013 (H.R. 2992), a bill that seeks to rationalize the current maze of state and local practices when it ...
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Camp Draft Released
Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) released his long-awaited tax plan yesterday. The Chairman has worked hard to put out a plan that addresses the biggest challenges faced by the tax code, and he ...
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S-CORP on the Air
February 21, 2014 Earlier this week, S-Corp Executive Director Brian Reardon took to the airwaves to talk all things S-Corp with radio host Mark Kohler. Kohler hosts a weekly program devoted to tax issues that ...
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New Finance Committee Chair
February 14, 2014 Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) took the helm of the Finance Committee this week. What does this mean for tax policy? Here’s what the press has to say: The Hill tells us he ...
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CBO Gets Effective Rate Wrong
February 6, 2014 The tax reform effort may face significant headwinds, but the debate over who pays what continues, with the business community doing a good job of articulating just how much they pay in ...
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Entitlement Death Spiral
February 5, 2014 Yesterday’s CBO report has started a firestorm here in DC, with most of it focused on the portion that says Obamacare will result in 2 million fewer workers by the year 2017. ...
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SOTU Commentary and Response
January 29, 2014 While the President’s State of the Union address last night covered a range of topics, it did little to move the needle on tax reform. The full transcript of the speech can ...
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S-Corp Comments to Senate Finance
January 17, 2014 Senator Baucus is headed to China but his discussion drafts remain, as does the January 17th deadline for commenting on them. So earlier today, the S Corporation Association submitted comments in response ...
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Letter from Chairman Simmons
Dear S-CORP Member: As the President of a multi-generation family business, the question Ibm often asked is bWhy has the McIlhenny Company stayed private all these years?bB Why, indeed. We do face limitations as a ...
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Senate Finance Committee Shakeup
Yesterday we got word that Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus is headed to Beijing to serve as the next Ambassador to China. For tax policy, the move changes our outlook in the following ways. ...
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Tax Reform Rehash
The release of Finance Committee tax reform discussion drafts on cost recovery and international tax have laid bare a reality that's been hiding just below the surface for two years now the visions for reform ...
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S Corp Payroll Tax Hike Resurfaces
Last week, Senate Democrats released a paper highlighting a dozen tax increases they would like to use to offset spending cuts in the current budget negotiations. As Politico reported: Tax expenditures topping the list include ...
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Budget & Tax Policy Outlook
The agreement earlier this month between Senators Reid and McConnell reopened the government for a few months, but it failed to resolve any of the issues that precipitated the shutdown in the first place.B Therebs ...
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Forbes on Pass Through Businesses
Marty Sullivan always writes interesting and provocative pieces on tax policy, so when we saw his recent piece in Forbes on tax reform Should Small Business Have Veto Power Over Corporate Tax Reform, we read ...
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The Importance of Pass Throughs
Put on your "must read" list a new paper from our friends at the Tax Foundation highlighting the importance of pass-through businesses to jobs and employment. It's the best written and most comprehensive summary of ...
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S-Corp Study in the News
Since its release yesterday, the effective tax rate study put out by S-Corp and the National Federation for Independent Business has been getting traction both on the Hill and in the media. The study shows ...
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Study Shows S Corps Pay Their Fair Share… And Then Some
Today, the National Federation of Independent Business and the S Corporation Association released a new study showing that S corporations pay the highest effective rates of any business type. The study, authored by Quantria Strategies, ...
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Corporate-Only Tax Reform Still a Bad Idea
Today, President Obama is announcing a repackaging of the corporate tax reform proposal he put forward back in 2012. Based on the White House fact sheet, the plan is a restatement of his 2012 plan ...
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S-CORP’s Comments to the Senate Finance Committee
Today is the deadline for the so-called "clean slate" process in the Senate, and while S corporations and other pass-through business entities are (properly so) not tax expenditures, we thought it was important that the ...
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Finance Committee ”Blank Slate” Letter
Yesterday, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus and Ranking Member Orrin Hatch ruined the July 4th vacation plans of every tax lobbyist in town with they laid out their new "blank slate" approach to tax ...
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Pass-Through Reform Issues
A couple of recent publications have highlighted the negative consequences of "corporate-only" tax reform, including a paper put out by Grant Thornton last month that focused on the challenges faced by businesses structured as S ...
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S-CORP Testifies
S corporation tax policy took center stage on the Hill earlier this month. Carrying the S-CORP flag before the House Ways and Means Select Revenue Subcommittee was Tom Nichols, the Chairman of S-CORP's Board of ...
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More Support for S Corp Modernization!
More groups are coming out in support for the provisions contained in H.R. 892, the S Corporation Modernization Act of 2013, sponsored by S-Corp champions Representatives Reichert (R-WA) and Kind (D-WI). As you recall, S ...
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Anti-Tax Reform in the President’s Budget
The President's budget is out, and for the second year in a row it seeks to redefine tax reform to fit its own purposes. The vast majority of policymakers view tax reform as embracing two ...
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Main Street Business Community Supports Comprehensive Tax Reform
A coalition of more than forty Main Street business groups, including the S Corporation Association, the National Federation of Independent Business, the National Farm Bureau, the Restaurant Association, and the National Wholesalers Association, released a ...
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Ways & Means Draft Strengthens S Corps
The Ways & Means Committee today released another in a series of "discussion drafts" outlining their plans for tax reform. This latest draft focuses on how to tax pass-through businesses -- those businesses organized as ...
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S Corporation Modernization Bill Reintroduced in House
Good news! Last week, S-Corp champions and Ways & Means Committee members Dave Reichert (R-WA) and Ron Kind (D-WI) introduced the latest version of the S Corporation Modernization Act of 2013. Designated H.R. 892, the ...
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S-CORP Opposes Senate Sequestration Bill
The Senate is voting today on legislation to swap the sequester spending cuts with a package evenly divided between other spending cuts and targeted tax hikes. The core tax hike in this package is our ...
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Big Picture on Pass-Through Taxation
Our expectation for 2013 is continued guerrilla warfare on specific tax hike proposals coupled with the looming threat of larger tax hikes when Congress next addresses the debt limit. Add in the determination of both ...
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Tax Outlook
The conventional wisdom in the press is that the agreement on the fiscal cliff killed tax reform. By making permanent so many tax policies -- including the AMT treatment and estate tax rules -- the ...
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Built-In Gains Relief in Fiscal Cliff Deal
Happy New Year everyone! As everyone knows, the President signed into law H.R. 8, the so-called mini deal addressing the fiscal cliff yesterday. The agreement was the result of negotiations between Vice President Biden and ...
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S-Corp Supports Plan B
Text of the letter we sent to Speaker Boehner earlier today: Dear Speaker: The S Corporation Association would like to thank you for all your work over the past two years to protect closely-held businesses ...
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BRT Offers Up Higher Tax Rates on Pass-Through Businesses
The Business Roundtable (BRT), an association of some of America's largest multinational corporations, today sent a letter to congressional leaders and the President calling for comprehensive tax and entitlement reform, but also leaving the door ...
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S Corp Meets with House Leadership
S Corporation Association Board Member Dan McGregor participated in a small business roundtable with House Republican leadership yesterday as part of our ongoing effort to educate policymakers on the important role pass-through businesses, and particularly ...
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Pass-Through Coalition Weighs In on Fiscal Cliff
The S Corporation Association joined with more than 40 other organizations in a letter to Congressional leadership calling for action on to pursue comprehensive tax reform that lowers rates on all forms of business income ...
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S-CORP Responds to Washington Post Fact Checker
The art of fact checking had its highs and lows over the course of the last election, but the Washington Post's recent review our study by Ernst & Young has to be a new low. ...
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Fiscal (Slope) Cliff Forecast
While everyone in Washington waits for Tuesday's election results, this story in The Hill caught our eye: "Fiscal cliff already weighing on economy." According to the story: While the expiring tax cuts and automatic spending ...
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S Corporations Featured in Presidential Debate
This week's Presidential debate featured both of our recent S-Corp studies -- the first highlighting how many Americans work for pass-through businesses, and the second making clear that the pending higher tax rates will result ...
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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 ...
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Rate Debate Update
The rate debate continues. Last week, the Senate failed to extend all the current tax rates and policies by a vote of 45-54. Two Republicans voted against the measure because of a refundable credit issue ...
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Rate Debate Begins
Majority Leader Harry this week filed a motion to proceed to the Senate Democratic bill (S 3414) to extend the Bush tax cuts for all taxpayers except the top two brackets. A procedural vote is ...
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New S-CORP Study in the News
As our Washington Wire readers know, S-CORP released an important study on Tuesday by Bob Carroll and Gerald Prante from Ernst & Young. The new study focuses on the rate debate in Congress and its ...
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New Ernst & Young Study on Top Rates
oday, the S Corporation Association released a new study by Ernst & Young focused on the rate debate in Congress and its impact on job creation and business investment. According to the study, allowing the ...
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BIG Update
It's been an active week for supporters of an extension of built-in gains (BIG) tax relief. First, Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA) worked to find another way to highlight an extension of ...
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President Targets S Corps
President Obama announced yesterday his continued support for raising tax rates on Americans earning more than $250,000 ($200,000 for single filers). As the Wall Street Journal reported today, these policies would hit a large number ...
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More than Half of Small Business Income Targeted Under Obama Tax Hike
The S Corporation Association today responded to reports that President Obama would press to raise taxes on S corporation owners and other taxpayers earning more than $250,000 a year: "Pass-through businesses like S corporations employ ...
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The Supremes and S Corps
The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the individual mandate today. For health care agencies, providers, insurance companies, and states that means they have 18 months to rework their entire health care system, including creating ...
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S Corps More Efficient
We have long argued that the American economy benefits from allowing entrepreneurs multiple business forms from which to choose. Each business has its own unique capital, management, governance, and transition challenges, and allowing those businesses ...
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Cliff Notes II
With less than 200 days left before Washington leads the economy over the fiscal cliff, the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) has offered up more evidence that Congress needs to act to extend the current ...
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Cliff Notes
House leadership has made clear they will take up legislation to extend the current tax rates and other policies through 2013, combined with expedited procedures for tax reform to be enacted in 2013. This one-two ...
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BIG (Built-In Gains) Day, Continued
Building on the oral testimony of Congressman Dave Reichert (R-WA) at the member's hearing on tax extenders held by the Ways and Means Revenues subcommittee, Congressman Ron Kind (D-WI) also weighed in to support extending ...
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Game On!
This morning, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp announced that the House would act this fall, prior to the November elections, to extend current tax rates while outlining a process whereby the Committee would ...
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Senate Defeats S-Corp Tax Hike
Good news for job creators! The Senate just voted against moving forward on legislation that would increase taxes on S corporations by $9 billion. The legislation was opposed by a broad coalition of business groups, ...
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Business Groups United Against Payroll Tax Hike
In advance of next week's vote to raise taxes on S corporations by $9 billion, a group of 38 business associations wrote Senate leadership strongly opposing the provision. Signed by S-Corp, the US Chamber, NFI ...
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BIG (Built-In Gains) Day
The Ways and Means Committee Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures heard from Members last week on the tax extenders they care most about. Given the relative dearth of legislative opportunities this year, there was lots ...
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S-Corp Payroll Taxes on the Table (Again)
The S-Corp payroll tax issue is back in play. According to the Associated Press and others, Senate Democrats are planning to raise taxes on S corporation shareholders by $6 billion to offset the cost of ...
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Keeping Rates the Same
It's Easter recess here in D.C. and we've had a chance to catch up on our reading. Topping the stack was Marty Sullivan's Tax Notes piece from March 26th. It's a rebuttal to our tax ...
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The Ryan Budget & Taxes
The budget introduced in the House today calls for a couple broad items on the tax front. First, it calls for extending all the tax provisions set to expire January 1st. That's the rate cliff ...
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Tiberi Introduces Bonus Depreciation Bill
This week Ways and Means Member Pat Tiberi (R-OH), one of our more vocal S-Corp champions, introduced legislation (H.R. 4196) to extend 100 percent bonus depreciation through the rest of this year. Bonus depreciation allows ...
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Ways and Means Hearing
S-corporation taxation took center stage on the Hill last week. Carrying the S-Corp flag before the House Ways and Means Committee was Association Advisor Tom Nichols of Meissner Tierney Fisher & Nichols S.C. Tom had ...
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Taxing Business Investment
Our position on tax reform is simple and outlined in the letter 45 business groups sent to Congress last fall: Pursue comprehensive reform that includes both the corporate and individual tax codes; Keep the top ...
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Administration Offers Corporate Tax Reform
The Administration released its outline for "business" tax reform today. Described by its authors as more than a set of principles but less than a fully-realized plan, the 22-page joint Treasury-White House release raises more ...
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President’s Budget and S Corps
The President's budget came out today, and despite the fact that it and the many proposals it contains are unlikely to move through Congress, there are a number of items of specific concern to S ...
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Extensions for Main Street
Three cheers for Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) for fighting to move extensions of expired tax provisions benefiting Main Street businesses! Senators Snowe and Landrieu introduced the Small Business Tax Extenders ...
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S Corporations and Payroll Taxes, Again
The release of Newt Gingrich's tax return has returned the issue of payroll taxes and S corporations to the public's attention. This issue first came to prominence during the 2004 election cycle, when Vice Presidential ...
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Presidential Candidates and Their Tax Returns
So, we now have the tax returns for President Obama, Governor Romney, and Speaker Gingrich. Did anybody notice that the S corporation owner is the one with the highest effective tax rate? Seriously, of the ...
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Wall Street Journal Misleads its Readers
Two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page piece entitled, "More Firms Enjoy Tax-Free Status." While you could argue the story itself was less biased than the headline, its overall bent leaves the ...
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New Year, Similar Outlook
It's a new year but the outlook for tax policy remains remarkably unchanged. The list of possible to-do items Congress might take on this year is pretty much the same and includes: Extension of the ...
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A Word From Our Chairman
Dear S-Corp Member: Happy New Year! I am writing to thank you for your continued support of the S Corporation Association and the important work we do in defense of the S Corp community. As ...
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Nobody Here But Us Unicorns
Last week, National Public Radio ran a story suggesting that while business groups are focused on the pending rate hikes and the impact they will have on jobs and investment, actual business owners are less ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Ways & Means Releases Tax Reform Outline — Part I
The Ways and Means Committee Republicans released their long-awaited draft on international tax reform today. According to the Committee, today's release is part of a series of reforms to be outlined by the Committee in ...
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Increased Activity on Tax Reform
A Hill report from yesterday adds detail to the rumblings over the past week that the House Ways and Means Committee Republicans are putting together a discussion outline for tax reform. According to The Hill: ...
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More Talk on Corporate-Only Reform
Congressional Quarterly has a really good article on the state of tax reform discussions on the Hill, and the Super Committee in particular. Here's a few of the key paragraphs: Advocates of a corporate overhaul ...
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Business Groups Endorse Comprehensive Tax Reform
As the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction considers tax reform options, a large and diverse group of business associations has written to the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means Committees making clear that ...
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Senate to Consider Surtax
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) reportedly plans to bring up the President's Jobs Bill this month and pay for it with a new 5 percent "surtax" on taxpayers making more than a million dollars. ...
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Corporate-Only Reform Takes One on the Chin
Tom Barthold of the Joint Committee on Taxation made the case to the Super Committee last week against attempting to reform the corporate side only. It would be very difficult to wall off a number ...
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Battle Lines on Tax Policy
The President rolled out his latest deficit reduction outline yesterday. As expected, it included several tax recommendations. In sum, the President is calling for an additional $1.5 trillion in tax collections over the next decade, ...
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Pass-Thru Employment Takes Center Stage
Robert Carroll's study on pass-thru businesses continues to be a centerpiece in the tax policy discussion here in DC. At yesterday's Finance Committee hearing on the future of tax rates, Bill Rys from the National ...
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Super Committee, Tax Reform, and Tax Provisions
Congress returned this week with most people focused on the Super Committee and its prospects for producing a deficit reduction plan by the end of the year. To recap, the Budget Control Act created a ...
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Honey, I Shrunk the Small Business Sector
Earlier this month, the Department of the Treasury released a report to redefine "small business." As Bloomberg reports: Using the proposed definition, 20 million small business owners reported $376 billion in net business income for ...
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Pass-throughs are b� Silent Majorityb� in Tax Reform Debate
As Washington adjusts its focus towards the new Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction, many observers expect the same sort of partisan ideological gridlock that has seized much of the process to this point, but there ...
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Tax Policy and the “Joint Committee”
Does the debt deal include tax policies? Step One of the plan includes $917 billion in spending cuts only. But Step Two calls on a special "Joint Committee" to develop an additional package of deficit ...
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The Gang Falls Short
With less than two weeks to go before the Treasury-announced August 2nd deadline to raise the debt ceiling, members of Congress are desperate for some sort of plan that will break the current stalemate over ...
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Ryan on S-Corps and Taxes
Earlier this morning, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) cited from our Ernst & Young study to defend Main Street businesses. We had been in to see Chairman Ryan back during our annual Board ...
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The President and Cantor on Taxes
The Hill was all atwitter last evening with rumors that some sort of deal had been reached over raising the debt ceiling and the deficit reduction package that needs to accompany that legislation. In moments ...
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Tax Notes: Make S-Corps Pay C-Corp Taxes
The drumbeat to impose the double corporate tax on large pass-through businesses grows louder. This time, it's Martin Sullivan at Tax Notes arguing that larger firms should all be subject to corporate-level taxes. At least ...
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Chairman Camp Makes the Case for S Corps and Other Pass-Through Businesses
Wednesday's meeting between House Republicans and the President failed to move the needle on deficit reduction, but it did give the top tax writer in the House an opportunity to deliver a message on tax ...
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Administration’s Corporate-Only Plan Waiting Behind Debt Ceiling
The Administration appears to be holding back their Corporate-only tax reform plan until budget negotiators can settle on a deal to raise the debt ceiling. The Treasury Secretary is counting on congressional leaders to reach ...
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Business Coalition Letter Opposes Administration’s Corporate-Only Plan
S-CORP and thirty other trade associations sent a letter to the congressional tax-writing committee leaders today stating their opposition to the Administration's reported corporate-only tax reform plan. States the letter: As organizations representing millions of ...
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More Details — and More Pushing — on the Push for Tax Reform
Last week, Politico reported more details on the pending Administration tax reform plan. As Mike Allen reports: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner plans to ignite the debate by unveiling a white paper that advocates lowering the ...
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Administration to Propose Taxing More Employers as C-Corporations
More chatter about the pending tax reform proposal being drafted by the Obama Treasury Department and its plan to force more pass-through businesses to pay taxes as C corporations. Reuters reported earlier this week: The ...
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S-CORP Study in the News
As our Washington Wire readers know, S-CORP released a ground-breaking study on Tuesday by Bob Carroll and Gerald Prante from Ernst & Young. The study quantifies the economic footprint of flow-through businesses for jobs and ...
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As Study Finds S Corps Employ One-Quarter of Private Sector Workers, New Legislation Improves S Corp Governance
Report Finds Flow-Through Businesses Essential to U.S. Economy On the heels of a new report finding that flow-through businesses furnish more than half of the private sector jobs in the U.S., Ways & Means Committee ...
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Treasury to Propose Corporate Tax Reform Plan
Appearing before a subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee to discuss FY 2012 Treasury Department funding, Secretary Geithner said the Administration is ready to get the ball rolling on corporate tax reform, telling Senators, "I'm ...
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The “ Ideal” Way to Tax Businesses
The story on tax reform continues to progress. Last week, the Senate Finance Committee held another in its series of hearings on the various aspects of reform. This hearing, entitled "How do Complexity, Uncertainty, and ...
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Camp Pushes Comprehensive Reform
The Wall Street Journal reports that Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp wants to push tax reform that addresses both the corporate and individual tax codes. That's good news for S corporations and the majority ...
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More on Pass-Throughs and Corporate Reform
Last week, the Ways and Means Select Revenue Subcommittee held a hearing that sought to counter the momentum building within the Administration and in the press to tax pass-through businesses to pay for corporate-only tax ...
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Using Pass-Throughs to Pay for Corporate Reform
Tax Notes has an article that pours more gasoline on the fire started by Bloomberg and the Geithner-led Treasury Department last weeks. The piece, written by Martin Sullivan, argues that pass-through treatment of some firms ...
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Treasury Targets S Corporations, Flow-Throughs
A Bloomberg article from Friday morning has been flying around tax policy circles here in D.C. and elsewhere. From the article: The Obama administration is seeking to widen the scope of its proposal to overhaul ...
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President’s Budget Proposal Released Today
We don't usually involve ourselves in spending debates but the President's budget proposal came out this morning and, given the sea of red ink ahead, we thought a quick overview of the budget process and ...
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New Tax Writers
The Senate last week announced the new members of the tax-writing Finance Committee. The announcement followed several weeks of negotiations over committee ratios of Democrats to Republicans, in addition to a related fight over amending ...
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New Year – New Challenges
Happy New Year! As we're preparing for the new Congress and the new challenges it brings, we would like to once again thank you for your continued support of the S Corporation Association and to ...
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2-Year Extension Set to Pass
Here's an early Christmas present -- the Senate voted this afternoon 81-19 to move forward on the tax deal cut between President Obama and congressional Republicans. We expect the package to pass intact early tomorrow. ...
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Rate Debate is All But Over
Another interesting week in our nation's capital. The big news is the tax deal struck between Congressional Republicans and the White House. We expect this deal to pass, with few changes, either next week or ...
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Latest on Rate Debate
Congress and the Administration continue to move through the three-step dance necessary to come to closure on the debate over extending expiring tax provisions. Step 1 took place two weeks ago when the Democratic and ...
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Rate Debate Continues
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. Here's a quick update on the tax outlook. Congress returned last week, but didn't make much progress. The big news was the cancellation of the bipartisan leadership meeting at the White ...
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Lame Duck and Tax Policies
Congress is set to return for its lame duck session the week after next. With Thanksgiving in the middle and Christmas at the end, Congress has maybe three weeks to fund the government and figure ...
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The S-CORP Crystal Ball — Tax Writing-Committees in 2011
The Intrade Prediction Markets show Republicans have a 94 percent chance of taking the House today, but only a 42 percent chance of controlling the Senate. If Intrade is correct, what does that mean for ...
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Taxes and Elections
With Congress gone, we thought we might dust off the old S-CORP Crystal Ball and make some predictions. By all accounts, the seats in play this cycle are well above the norm and this could ...
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President Signs BIG Relief!
In a capital-starved economy, what makes more sense than allowing firms access to their own capital? For one year beginning in 2011, hundreds of thousands of S corporations around the country will be able to ...
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Built-In Gains Relief Passes the House, Headed to President!
Good news for investment and S corporations! The House yesterday adopted a five-year holding period for built-in gains as part of a larger small business tax bill; the temporary one-year provision would take effect in ...
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The Rate Debate Continuesb &
Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus staked out unique turf yesterday, calling for keeping tax policy stable for middle class taxpayers, allowing rates to rise for taxpayers making more than $250,000, but for taxing capital gains ...
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Senate Passes Built-In Gains Relief
After months of maneuvering, the Senate today adopted H.R. 5297, the Small Business Jobs and Credit Act.B This legislation includes a number of business-friendly provisions, including the built-in gains tax relief so important to the ...
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Small Business Update
The Congress is back, and Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) indicated last week that he will support closing debate on the small business tax bill pending in the Senate.B He should be the 60th vote, clearing ...
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Business Community Opposes Tax Hike
Following yesterday's comments by President Obama, the S Corporation Association joined together with more than 30 other business associations to make the case for action by Congress to avoid the massive tax hike on private ...
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Volcker Report Released. On a Friday. In August.
The headline says it all. The long-awaited Volcker Tax Reform Commission report was released last Friday and was immediately put on a shelf someplace in the basement of the Ways and Means Committee. According to ...
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Tax Policy on the Table for September
Members of Congress are back home and set to return mid-September for a final three week session before the November elections. Add in two or three weeks of possible "lame duck" session, and that's the ...
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Small Business & Extender Tax Bill Update 2.0
After reappearing briefly last week, the latest version of the tax extenders package (Baucus IV) has now disappeared. The plan was for the latest version to garner sufficient support and then be attached to the ...
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Small Business & Extender Tax Bill Update
If you watched the Senate floor yesterday, you might be under the impression that nothing was happening. The Senate spent most of the day in a Quorum Call (Senate code for nothing happening), and when ...
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Senate Back on Small Business Bill
The Senate restarted debate on the small business bill last night. Majority Leader Reid called the bill back up and filed cloture on a new version. Among other changes, the bill now includes an agricultural ...
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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, ...
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Finance Reviews Economic Impact of Tax Hikes
It's July 14th, 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 ...
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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 ...
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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. ...
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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 ...
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Latest On Extenders and the Payroll Tax
So the Senate just adopted a stand-alone, six month Doc Fix. Adoption of this provision sends a couple signals for the broader extender package. This action follows on last night's failed 56-40 cloture vote on ...
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Baucus Substitute, Part II
After falling 15 votes shy of the 60 needed to close debate and move forward on the "extender plus" package, Finance Chairman Max Baucus offered up a second substitute last evening and Senator Reid immediately ...
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Latest on Payroll Tax Hike and Extenders
Earlier today, the Senate voted earlier on its version of the "extenders plus" bill passed by the House a few weeks back. The vote, on a motion to waive a Budget Act point of order, ...
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Senators Snowe and Enzi Take On Small Business Tax Hike
The payroll tax hike in the House-passed extenders bill moves to the front burner in the Senate this week. Senators Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Mike Enzi (R-WY) introduced an amendment late last week to strike ...
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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 ...
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S-CORP Opposes Extender Pay-For
Your S-CORP team has been busy hitting the Hill in opposition to this payroll tax provision in recent days. Late last week, the House Ways and Means Committee released its package of tax extenders, partially ...
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Payroll Tax Update
Congressional taxwriters, especially in the House, continue to express interest in raising payroll taxes on active S corporation shareholders as an offset to the tax extender package under consideration, and the business community has responded. ...
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Payroll Tax Hikes Back On The Agenda
Last week, the S corporation community was put on high alert when we received word that an S corporation payroll tax increase similar to the provision from the old Rangel Mother bill (H.R. 3970) was ...
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Small Business Tax Package Recap
With the Senate back in town this week, here's a quick recap on the status of the S Corp reform tax title we've been advocating in Congress: First, on January 10th, the House passed a ...
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Private Enterprise and Jobs
A recent Washington Times article by Mike Whalen, chief executive of Heart of America Restaurants and Inns, should give policymakers pause as they worry about weak job growth while simultaneously piling one tax on top ...
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House Passes Health Care Reform and "Fix"
After a long legislative odyssey, the House passed the broad health care reform package on Sunday evening by a vote of 219-212. This legislation is identical to the Senate bill adopted on Christmas Eve and ...
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Health Care Reform and S Corporations
President Obama released a list of proposed changes to the Senate-passed health care reform bill on Monday, and while there is plenty to interest any American, one item in particular should catch the attention of ...
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The Skinny on the Jobs Bill
So we're still trying to figure out what happened between Thursday morning and Thursday afternoon last week. On Thursday morning, the Senate Finance Committee released an $84 billion "Jobs" bill draft with all the expected ...
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Jobs Bill on Senate Floor Next Week
Senate leadership has committed to taking up a Jobs bill next week. The details of the package are still being worked out, but the list released by the Senate Democrats includes: Job Creation tax credit ...
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President Releases 2011 Budget
The president released his FY2011 budget yesterday. According to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the administration begins with a ten year baseline deficit of $5.5 trillion dollars. Simply put, if Congress and the ...
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S Corporations and Payroll Taxes are Back in the News
A couple weeks ago, House-Senate health care negotiators raised the idea of paying for health care reform by expanding the types of income subject to the Medicare payroll tax. Payroll taxes are limited to wages ...
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Business Community Rallies Around S Corporation Modernization
Last week, your S-CORP team sent a letter signed by 22 of our association allies to members of the House and Senate, urging them to cosponsor legislation to replace the dated rules that have governed ...
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Senate Jobs Bill First Out of the Chute
With health care reform in a state of political limbo, Senate leadership is busy assembling a job-creation package that is likely to be the chamber's next significant legislative effort. Just before Christmas recess, the House ...
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Tax Outlook for 2010 — Starting in a Hole
The economic fear that gripped folks in the Fall of 2008 has resulted in a historic collapse of federal revenues. Revenue collections since 1960 have stayed in a relatively tight pattern centered around 18 percent ...
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Welcome to 2010!
Dear S-CORP Member: As we begin a new year and gear-up for all the hopes and challenges that 2010 will bring, I wanted to take a moment to thank you for your support and highlight ...
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Items Remaining on the Congressional “ To-Do” List
Friends of ours who follow Congress have begun quoting the old country and western song, "How Can I Miss You If You Won't Go Away?" With Christmas less than two weeks away, Members of Congress ...
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Business Community Supports Estate Tax Relief
Last week, the S Corporation Association joined a group of nearly 50 small business organizations to support estate tax legislation (H.R. 3905) to make permanent rates and exclusion levels more favorable than those in place ...
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S-Corp Organizes Defense of Family Business
Led by S-CORP, a coalition of fifteen small business trade associations sent letters last week to the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means Committees urging policymakers to protect the interests of family-owned businesses ...
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Update on Estate Tax
We've been visiting Capitol Hill offices over the past couple weeks to talk about the estate tax and its impact on family businesses and now have a clearer idea of where the issue is headed. ...
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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 ...
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Estate Tax Update
Where to start? The August break is nearly over and Congress is scheduled to return after Labor Day with a full agenda that includes finishing (or finishing off) health care reform, wrapping up all the ...
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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 ...
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House Releases Health Care Legislation
As expected, House Leadership released its health care reform plan yesterday -- America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 (H.R. 3200). As you can imagine, there are any number of provisions to explore in a ...
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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: ...
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S-Corp Modernization Bill Introduced in the House
Good news! Last week, S-CORP Champion Congressman Ron Kind (D-WI) introduced the "S Corporation Modernization Act of 2009." Joining Congressman Kind in sponsoring the legislation were fellow Ways & Means Committee Members Wally Herger (R-CA), ...
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Value-Added Tax Coming to America?
Two weeks ago, the Senate Finance Committee released its summary of options to pay for health care reform. As expected, the list was long and could be divided up any number of ways. One item ...
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S Corp Modernization Introduced in the Senate!
Good news for S corporations! S-CORP allies Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) today introduced the "S Corporation Modernization Act of 2009." This legislation is similar to bills offered in previous Congresses and ...
(Read More)
The Washington Post Discovers Small Employers
The Washington Post this week reported on an issue that shouldn't come as a surprise for S-CORP readers: President Obama's tax plans could hurt many of America's small businesses. Small business owners who report their ...
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The Washington Post Discovers Small Employer
The Washington Post this week reported on an issue that shouldn't come as a surprise for S-CORP readers: President Obama's tax plans could hurt many of America's small businesses. Small business owners who report their ...
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Middle-Class Tax Increases on the Horizon
Last Wednesday's The Hill included a comprehensive overview of the exploding spending and deficit picture and calls into question President Obama's ability to live up to his long-held promise not to raise middle class taxes. ...
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Budget Process and Reconciliation
Both the House and the Senate completed their respective budget resolutions last week. The plan now is for the two bodies to get together to resolve any differences and produce a single budget in the ...
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Congressional Budget Takes Form
Lots of budget related news in recent days with implications for small business taxpayers. First, the Congressional Budget Office weighed in last week with its analysis of the Obama budget outline and estimated that the ...
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Small Business and Tax Rates — The Debate Continues
The advocates over at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) issued a new study last week demonstrating, once again, how few "real" small businesses would be adversely affected by raising the top two ...
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Obama’s Tax Plans Take Shape
President Obama released a 140-page outline of his budget today that reflects his revenue and spending priorities for the next couple of years. Chief among these is a major change in federal health care policies. ...
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Estate Tax Fix Poses Threat for Family Businesses
As we have noted, the stars appear to have aligned for a big estate tax compromise later this year, most likely to be focused on freezing the 2009 rules for at least a year. This ...
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Congress Reaches Deal on Stimulus
Sometimes, Congress meets a deadline. Six weeks ago, congressional leadership and the new Obama Administration had set out the Presidents' Day recess as the deadline for getting the economic stimulus package to the President's desk. ...
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Stimulus Update
The Washington Post reports that the Senate Stimulus bill is short of the 60 votes needed for it to move through the chamber. As the Post noted: Senate Democratic leaders conceded yesterday that they do ...
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BIG Reform Included in Finance Committee Mark!
Big news for S corporations! S-CORP champions Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) have succeeded in securing BIG reform in Senator Baucus' (D-MT) version of a stimulus package! As S-CORP readers know, BIG ...
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Stimulus Introduced in House
The House Leadership released an outline of its proposed stimulus package yesterday with few surprises. The total package is $825 billion with $550 billion in new spending and $275 billion in tax relief. On the ...
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Estate Tax Compromise Under Development
Looks like Congressional Democrats and President-elect Obama's economic team are already beginning work on legislation to prevent a full repeal of the estate tax in 2010. The Wall Street Journal reports that President Obama's plan ...
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Stimulus Package Discussed
Following a closed-door planning session today of members of the Senate Finance Committee, we expect the Committee will mark-up the tax portions of a stimulus package as early as January 22nd. As we indicated previously, ...
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Tax Relief Grows in Proposed Stimulus
Congress is back and ready to legislate. First out of the box will be the long-anticipated economic stimulus package. Unlike previous efforts, the current push has the benefit of support from leadership in the House, ...
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Bailout Watch
The ongoing soap opera of the auto bailout continues, with Congress failing to find a means of balancing the needs of Detroit with the concerns of taxpayers and Senate Republicans. As a result, the bailout ...
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Auto Bailout Stalls Stimulus
Congress is back for the week, but we do not expect much to get done. House and Senate Democrats support allocating $25 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program to bailout the Big Three automakers, ...
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Second Stimulus on the Horizon
A second stimulus package is being formulated up on the Hill, but is by no means a done deal at this point.B Just before adjourning for the election, the House passed a $61 billion bill ...
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Election Impact on S Corporations
We'll write more about the election in coming months, but wanted to send out a quick summary of how the elections yesterday affect the S corporation community. We've noted several times that President-elect Obama's tax ...
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S Corp Champions Push BIG Relief
As Congress moves forward on the stimulus bill, the S Corporation Association continues to push Built-In Gains tax relief as a vital part of the package. If the economy is suffering from a lack of ...
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Congress to Consider Lame Duck Session Stimulus
What time is it when the market is down, unemployment is up, personal consumption is falling and manufacturing activity is contracting? Time for another economic stimulus package. Last week, the Ways and Means Committee confirmed ...
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Bailout Update
The Treasury Department announced over the weekend that it would infuse $250 billion directly into the banking system, starting with approximately $125 billion targeted at nine major institutions including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. Combined with ...
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Congress Passes Bailout — Goes Home for Elections
The House reversed course today and voted to adopt the expanded Treasury bailout package by a vote of 263-171. As S-Corp readers know, the Senate took the original Treasury plan, added the tax extender package, ...
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Bailout and Extenders Combined
As equity markets continue their wild swings while the credit markets signal distress, Congress will make another run at the financial sector bailout this evening. This time the Senate will try. The new package retains ...
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Financial Bailout Package Fails in House
If you are following the markets, you might have noticed the financial sector bailout plan failed in the House, 216 to 206. Here's the vote tally. When it become apparent the vote was going to ...
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Bailout Votes This Week
The House is scheduled to vote on the financial sector bailout package later today. If it passes, the Senate will take it up on Wednesday. The package itself retains the core Paulson proposal to give ...
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Congressional Overview
We are nearing the finish line for the 110th Congress with more on the table than when we started nearly two years ago. None of the 12 bills to fund the government have been adopted. ...
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Extenders Advance
Following a series of votes on alternatives, the Senate adopted a $150 billion package of tax extenders yesterday by a vote of 92-5. The key components of the package include: A one year extension of ...
(Read More)
Bailout Takes Center Stage
Our friends at the Treasury spent the weekend working primarily with the House Financial Services Committee to refine the Administration's emergency plan to purchase hundreds of billions of dollars worth of mortgage backed securities. According ...
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Tax Policy and Small Business
Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reviewed the most recent comments by Senator Barack Obama regarding his plans for tax policy. As we noted in the past, the bias is for higher tax rates ...
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Happy 50th, S Corps!
Today marks the 50th birthday of the S corporation! As you can imagine, here at the S Corporation Association we've got the cake and candles ready. Perhaps more importantly, at a time of economic and ...
(Read More)
S-Corp Supports Small Business Tax Modernization Act
More good news for S Corps! Congresswoman Nydia VelC!zquez, Chairwoman of the House Small Business Committee, introduced legislation last week "the Small Business Tax Modernization Act of 2008" that includes many provisions with the potential ...
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Broad Business Coalition Supports BIG Relief
There are increased reports in the media about a potential stimulus package to be considered when Congress returns in September (here and here). If Congress does consider another stimulus package and wants to target help ...
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Small Business Exporters to the Rescue
In a bit of good news, the new trade numbers came in and are in line to add 1.8 percent to the GDP in the second quarter. That, and stronger than expected retail sales numbers, ...
(Read More)
Stimulus Getting More Ink
Several papers are reporting what we have been hearing for the past week - a possible second economic stimulus package is in the early stages of discussion. As the Wall Street Journal reported: Senate Majority ...
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S Corporations and the Estate Tax
With a large fraction of the tax code expiring in the next couple of years, the big surprise may be the growing consensus for compromise over the estate tax. The estate tax is scheduled to ...
(Read More)
S Corp Testifies in the House!
This week the House Committee on Small Business held a hearing to consider reforms that would promote equality and growth for S corporations. Rick Klahsen, a member of the S Corporation Association's Board of Advisors ...
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Busy Week in Washington
Lots of activity on tax policy with implications for S corporations this week. On Monday, the White House held a forum on the expiring tax relief and its potential to hurt the economy if it ...
(Read More)
Senate S Corp Modernization Act Introduced!
Good news for the S corporation community! Senators Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Gordon Smith (R-OR) and Ben Cardin (D-MD) introduced the S Corporation Modernization Act of 2008, S. 3063, last evening. The introduction ...
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House Passes Marginal Tax Increase
Foreshadowing things to come, the House on Thursday adopted legislation to increase Veterans education benfits by raising marginal tax rates on individuals - including S corporation shareholders - making $500,000 a year or more. As ...
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More Details, Little Clarity on the Tax Front
Just to keep everybody up to speed, there are a couple recent tax items of note. First, CongressDaily reports the House may take up yet another extender package prior to the Memorial Day recess. This ...
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Stimulating S Corporations
S Corporation Association Chairman Richard Roderick weighed in on behalf of S corporations yesterday regarding the second stimulus package being developed in the House. In a letter to Small Business Committee Chairwoman Nydia VelC!zquez, Roderick ...
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Small Business Week 2008
Washington loves small businesses, at least in its rhetoric.B April 20-26th was Small Business Week.B The annual event is devoted to recognizing the "determination and ingenuity of America's workers and entrepreneurs who play a vital ...
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Did Somebody Say Tax Reform?
Last Tuesday the Senate Finance Committee held the first of several planned hearings on tax reform. These hearings are being held in preparation of the 111th Congress, when the Ways and Means and Finance committees ...
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Senator Clinton’s Tax Policies – Bad for S Corporations
Recently, we reviewed Senator Obama's tax policies and how they might impact S corporations should he become President. What about Senator Clinton? If she becomes President, how would her tax policies impact small and closely-held ...
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Budget Debate and Taxes
Everyone in Washington knows Congress will have to address the growth of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) and the expiration of popular tax provisions over the next three years. Just how they will go about ...
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Obama and S Corporations
The Texas and Ohio presidential primaries are dominating the news today, so we thought webd take a look at the candidatesb tax policies and see how they would affect S corporations.B B Webll start with ...
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Peering into the Future of Tax Policy
We've been asked to gaze into our crystal ball and see what the future of tax policy looks like. For S Corporations, it looks a lot like when the Ghost of Christmas Future popped in ...
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President to Sign Fiscal Stimulus
The President is expected to sign the fiscal stimulus package on Wednesday. After two weeks of hand ringing and posturing, the Senate finally adopted a slightly modified version of the bill the House and the ...
(Read More)
President’s Budget is Good for S Corporations, Too Bad Congress will Ignore It
The President'Fs fiscal year 2009 budget was released this morning together with the "Blue Book" describing his proposed tax policies. Here are a couple thoughts as Congress begins the process of putting together its tax ...
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Stimulus Boost to Senate Bill
The initial GDP estimate for the first quarter of 2008 (based on data from October, November and December 2007) came in yesterday at a very low 0.6%. That's a big reduction from the 4.9% increase ...
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Stimulus Deal Announced
As the news reported over the last couple of days, Administration and House leaders have agreed to a package of temporary tax relief to provide the economy with fiscal stimulus. As reported, the package would ...
(Read More)
Stimulus Introduced in House
The House Leadership released an outline of its proposed stimulus package yesterday with few surprises. The total package is $825 billion with $550 billion in new spending and $275 billion in tax relief. On the ...
(Read More)
2008 Tax Forecast
While everyone else is predicting the presidential primaries, we thought we'd take a look at the forecast for tax policy in Congress this year. The usual refrain for a presidential election year is that all ...
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President Bush Plugs S Corps in Chicago
Say what you want about this President, he understands the important role S corporations play in the economy and the critical link between low tax rates, business investment, and job creation. This excerpt is from ...
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Congressman Kind Introduces S Corp Modernization Bill
Just before Congress left for the holiday break, Congressman Ron Kind (D-WI) introduced legislation to help improve the rules under which S corporations operate. The bill, H.R. 4840, is entitled the "S Corporation Modernization Act ...
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AMT and Other Updates
Just after Thanksgiving, we put together a list of the must-pass items that Congress would turn to in December, including the AMT/Extender package, omnibus spending bill, farm bill, S-CHIP, energy bill, and Medicare Doctors payment ...
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Senate Passes AMT
The United States Senate last evening passed a one-year extension of the so-called AMT patch - a higher AMT exemption to protect 20 million or so taxpayers from being subjected to the AMT on April ...
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The End is Near (of the First Session)
Congress returns Monday with lots to do and just three weeks to do it. Here's the list of must-pass items we've identified: AMT Patch Tax Extenders (Including the S Corporation Charitable Provision) S-CHIP Reauthorization All ...
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Death of Death Tax Repeal?
Yesterday's Senate Finance Committee hearing on the estate tax resulted in some good theatrics, but little in the way of comfort to those family businesses attempting to plan their way past the tax. Berkshire Hathaway's ...
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Higher Tax Rates on Horizon
We've had numerous conversations in the past couple of weeks with S corporation owners about the tax outlook for the next couple of years, and it's becoming apparent that the S-Corp community is underestimating the ...
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Taxpayer Expectations and the Rangel Surtax
We have had a chance to digest a bit more of the Rangel bill introduced last week. There was a lot to digest. Repealing section 199, LIFO, and IC-DISC, while extending the depreciation period for ...
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Chairman Rangel Proposes Payroll Tax Increase on Small and Family-Owned Businesses
When Congress created the S corporation in 1958, the IRS ruled that only S corporation shareholders who are active in their business should be subject to payroll taxes, and then only on amounts received for ...
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More Details on the Rangel Tax Bill
At a members briefing this evening, Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel outlined his "Mother of All Tax Bills" to the Committee membership. In essence, he outlined three separate bills that he will introduce in ...
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Tax Credit Repeal – Another Hit on S Corporations?
BNA this morning has additional information about the AMT repeal legislation planned to be introduced tomorrow by Chairman Charlie Rangel. Aside from the offsets we mentioned yesterday - rate increase, LIFO repeal, manufacturing deduction repeal ...
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Rangel to Propose Corporate Rate Cut
The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel will likely introduce his "Mother of All Tax Bills" this week, a proposal marrying the repeal of the individual AMT with ...
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AMT Dominates Tax Outlook
For the past few months, we've been tracking the progress, or lack thereof, of legislation to protect taxpayers from the growth of the Alternative Minimum Tax. The two principle points of tension were: Conflicting approaches ...
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Death Tax Compromise Talks in Senate
At the Finance Committee markup last week on the Agriculture bill, Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) offered an amendment to make permanent changes to the estate tax. The Kyl amendment would have created a new framework ...
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IRS Announces Simplified Process for Late S Corporation Elections
The IRS yesterday announced a new procedure designed to simplify the process for taxpayers wanting to request relief for late S corporation elections. According to the new procedure, companies will now be able to file ...
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IRS Issues Guidance on S Corporation Rules and Definitions
Yesterday, the IRS released a set of proposed regulations to clarify S corporation family shareholder rules as well as definitions of "powers of appointment" and "potential current beneficiaries" of ESBTs. Changes were also made to ...
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AMT and Corporate Tax Rates Together? Watch Out
As we have previously reported, Chairman Charlie Rangel has a deep interest in passing a permanent "fix" to the Alternative Minimum Tax. Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Paulson has kicked-off efforts to cut the corporate tax rate ...
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Congress Returns
Congress came back from its August break this week and is picking up right where it left off, struggling with the question of what to do with the Alternative Minimum Tax and examining how to ...
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Treasury Issues a New Tax Gap Report
This morning, the Treasury and the IRS released the new "tax gap" report. This report is in response to a request from Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus that the Treasury produce a plan to ...
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Treasury Conference on Corporate Tax Policy
Your S-Corp Association friends attended the Treasury conference on corporate tax policy last week, rubbing shoulders with the Secretary of the Treasury, Alan Greenspan, and others. As expected, the bulk of the speakers focused on ...
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Debate Over Taxing Hedge Funds
Under the category of "We Told You So," yesterday's CongressDaily includes an analysis by Martin Vaughn that makes a point similar to the theme of our last Wire - that the debate over how to ...
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Treasury Holds Conference on Business Tax Issues
Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson will hold a one day conference on July 26th to focus attention on the US tax treatment of business income and how it might be improved. The conference will include a ...
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Accountants Weigh in on Tax Gap
First, the "Big Four" accounting firms weighed in on the Tax Gap. Now, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the trade association for the accounting community, has added its input. While only 1.3 percent ...
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Lessons from the Failed Senate Energy Tax Package
As reported in the press, last week the Senate failed to add a sizable energy tax package to its comprehensive energy bill prior to adoption. The Senate voted 57-36 not to end debate (60 votes ...
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Tax Bill Offset Tally
To simplify tracking of the various tax bills under consideration by Congress, we've put together a chart of what's moving and what's being discussed, including separate tax bills on the AMT, energy production, education, housing, ...
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Small Business Tax Package Signed Into Law
Congress returns this week following its Memorial Day recess. As expected, the Small Business tax package was signed into law along with the Iraqi War funding just before they left. This package included a number ...
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Small Business Tax Package — Part II!
House Leadership has indicated that it will attach the $4.8 billion Small Business tax package to the second Iraq supplemental spending bill to be considered by the House this week. The tax package will likely ...
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Small Business Tax Package Agreement
Late Friday evening, House and Senate tax writers announced they had come to an agreement on the Small Business Tax Package to accompany an increase in the minimum wage. While this package is destined to ...
(Read More)
Small Business Tax Package in Play
The small business tax package is back in the news. What we heard yesterday -- confirmed by press reports this morning -- is that the four top tax writers (Baucus, Rangel, Grassley, and McCrery) have ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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, ...
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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 ...
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Tax Hikes under the Guise of Tax Relief?
Here's more on what the House might be considering for its next tax bill this spring. As you'll recall, last week they announced they would put forward a plan to address -- that is, slow ...
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AMT Plan Imminent — House & Senate Moving in Different Directions
The Ways & Means held a hearing yesterday on the Alternative Minimum Tax. While there is broad consensus in the tax world that the AMT is broken, there is little common ground on exactly how ...
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Energy Tax Bill and Energy Offsets
For those small business groups who are thinking that Big Oil will foot the bill for any energy tax title enacted this year, a new CRS report issued Tuesday provides little comfort. The report, entitled ...
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S-CORP Leads Coalition Push for S Corporation Reforms in Minimum Wage Bill
The S Corporation Association ("S-CORP") today sent a letter to congressional tax writers advocating for the inclusion of S corporation reforms in the final small business tax relief package and for the need to make ...
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Is Official Washington Targeting S Corporations? Sure Looks That Way
As our readers know, the IRS is currently targeting S corporations, and only S corporations, for audits as part of its on-going "Tax Gap" research project. And the Joint Committee on Taxation and Treasury Inspector ...
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House Passes Small Business Tax Package — What’s the Next Step?
Real quick, the House just passed its small business tax package (H.R. 976) to accompany the proposed minimum wage increase, 360-45. This action follows a very bipartisan markup last Monday, where the tone of the ...
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Rangel Ready to Prepare Small Business Tax
Good news for S corporations and other closely-held businesses! Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY) indicated yesterday that he plans to put together a package of small business provisions to be coupled with the ...
(Read More)
Do S Corporations Pay the Minimum Wage?
Now that the Senate has adopted a package pairing the minimum wage together with provisions to improve S corporation rules, one of the questions our Capitol Hill friends have asked us is, "Do S corporations ...
(Read More)
Stimulus Deal Announced
As the news reported over the last couple of days, Administration and House leaders have agreed to a package of temporary tax relief to provide the economy with fiscal stimulus. As reported, the package would ...
(Read More)
Minimum Wage & Small Business Tax Package Update
Just a quick update on the status of the $8 billion small business tax package that may accompany the proposed minimum wage increase. The bill is currently the pending business in the Senate. On Monday, ...
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Finance Reports Out Small Business Tax Relief
In a bit of potential good news for small businesses, the Senate Finance Committee today adopted by voice vote an $8 billion package of small business tax incentives to accompany a planned increase in the ...
(Read More)
NEW WAYS AND MEANS COMMITTEE DEMOCRATS ARE ANNOUNCED
While the 109th Congress adjourned last weekend, the Democratic Leadership in the House has been busy this week planning for next year. Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi has announced nominees for key committees in the House including, ...
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Finance Holds Small Business Tax Relief Hearing — S CORP Submits Testimony
Today, the Chairman of the S Corporation Association Advisory Committee, James Redpath, submitted testimony on S Corp reform to the Senate Committee on Finance. The Senate Finance Committee held the hearing on small business tax ...
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A New Congress Brings New Tax Writers
Last week marked the swearing-in of all new Members of Congress and the official change in control of the House and Senate from Republican to Democratic hands. House Democrats elected Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) Speaker of ...
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109th Congress Concludes Business
Out with the Old Challenges Last week the House and Senate wrapped up the 109th Congress by approving a "continuing resolution" to fund the federal government through February 15th. Doing so leaves major 2007 spending ...
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TAX BILL IN LAME DUCK?
Real quick, here's what we're hearing on the prospects of tax legislation moving when Congress returns next week: Congressmen Hastert, Boehner, and Thomas are gathering today to decide what the House tax bill should look ...
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KEY NEW SENATE POSITIONS ANNOUNCED
The "Lame Duck" session of Congress convened this week to tackle a number of organizational and legislative priorities. The 109th Congress must wrap up the remaining 2007 fiscal year spending bills or at least pass ...
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S-CORP OPPOSES EXPORTER TAX INCREASE
Chairman Submits Comments to Tax Writers S-CORP Chairman Tom McMahon today submitted comments (click here for full text) to the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees opposing a proposed tax increase on small ...
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Proposed Tax Increase on S Corp Exporters!
Just before breaking for the November elections, the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means Committees introduced their tax technical corrections bills (H.R. 6264 & S. 4026) to fix errors and ambiguities in the tax ...
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S Corps Wary of Tax Gap Report and Hunt for Revenue Offsets
This week Congress winds up legislative business so that Members can go home and campaign for re-election. Following Election Day, both the House and the Senate will come back for a "Lame Duck" session of ...
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S Corps Everywhere!
You couldn't swing a dead cat in Washington last week and not hit somebody busy touting the benefits of S corporations to the American economy, job creation, and retirement security. First, the President highlighted S ...
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Senators Gordon Smith and Blanche Lincoln Introduce the BOOST Act!
Congress is back in session, and we've got good news! Senators Smith and Lincoln yesterday introduced S. 3857, the "Bringing Opportunities to Our Small-Business Taxpayers (BOOST)" Act. This legislation is designed to help all closely ...
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Tax Bill Action Moves to the Senate
Following late Friday night and early Saturday morning votes in the House on the Pension Protection Act of 2006 and the Estate Tax and Extension of Tax Relief Act of 2006, attention now turns to ...
(Read More)
IRS TARGETS S CORPS!
As a follow-up to its broader "Tax Gap" study completed last spring, the IRS yesterday announced it will engage in a multiyear study of about 5000 taxpayers reporting S corporation income or losses. According to ...
(Read More)
So Little Time, So Many Tax Bills
Congress has about six weeks left of session before it leaves for the mid-term elections and a very full list of unfinished items on the agenda. Just on the tax front, there is possible action ...
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Ways and Means Committee Chairman Introduces Estate Tax Relief
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-CA) has introduced legislation that would permanently extend lower taxes on estates. As S-CORP members may know, estate tax relief has been a top priority of the ...
(Read More)
Senate Finance Committee Holds Tax Gap Hearing
S-CORP continues to closely monitor proposals to increase taxes on S corporations through increased payroll taxes or by repealing the LIFO method of inventory accounting.B On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing entitled ...
(Read More)
S-CORP Weighs in On Corporate Tax Reform
It's his last term in Congress, and Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas (R-CA) is working hard right up until the end. While few observers think tax reform will make tangible progress before November's mid-term ...
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President Signs Tax Bill
Before a South Lawn crowd today, President Bush signed into law H.R. 4297, the "Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005". Cumbersome name aside, the bill is a relatively streamlined effort to extend several ...
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House Approves $70 Billion Tax Cut Bill
Yesterday, by a vote of 244-185, the House approved the long-delayed tax reconciliation bill (H.R. 4297) following an agreement between House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-CA) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck ...
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No Agreement on H.R. 4297
House and Senate tax writers failed to reach an agreement this week on a final tax reconciliation conference report (H.R. 4297), despite earlier predictions that a final bill would be unveiled this week. It appears ...
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Tax Relief Bill Negotiations Proceed
Today's Congress Daily includes a number of points about the conference between House and Senate negotiators: "One source said April 25 it appears House negotiators will be willing to accept at least some of the ...
(Read More)
IRS Considering More S Corp Guidance
The 2004 American Jobs Creation Act contained numerous S Corp friendly provisions, including increasing the number of allowable S Corp shareholders from 75 to 100 and expanding the definition of a single shareholder to include ...
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S-CORP and Congressional Small Business Advocates Continue Push for b� Sting Taxb� Relief
Congress has returned from a weeklong recess and once again will attempt to finish last year's tax business: a $70 billion tax cut bill (the "reconciliation" bill) and a pension reform bill. The S Corporation ...
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New Congressional Budget Doesn’t Protect Tax Relief
There are two ways to pass a tax bill in the Senate: bring it up under the regular floor rules and gain the support of 60 Senators, or bring it up under the "budget reconciliation" ...
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Congressional Efforts to Close Tax Gap Means S Corp Payroll Tax Increase Is Still A Threat
Today the Senate Budget Committee held a hearing on "the causes of and solutions for addressing the federal tax gap." Witnesses included IRS Commissioner Mark Everson, Government Accountability Office Comptroller General David Walker, and Nina ...
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The President’s Budget
One of the challenges of political advocacy is to separate real from imagined threats. For S Corps, the threat of increasing payroll taxes on S Corp profits continues to be very real indeed, despite the ...
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Political Landscape of 2nd Session of the 109th Congress
The second session of the 109th Congress has begun! The Senate was in session for a portion of January to consider President Bush's nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court with the final vote ...
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S-CORP Marked Key Legislative Successes in 2005, Though Major Battles Loom in 2006
With Congress finally home for the holidays, S-CORP has begun to focus on its 2006 agenda. Before we embark on the year ahead, however, we wanted to take a moment to recap for member companies ...
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S-CORP Victory in Senate Tax Bill; S Corporation Reform Legislation Introduced in the House!
November has been an active and exciting month for the S Corporation Association and we have much to be thankful for: TWO S corporation modernization provisions approved by the Senate as part of a larger ...
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Tax Relief Delayed - Pressure for Offsets Grows
Congress returns to legislative business this week following a week long Columbus Day recess. With numerous outstanding issues for Congress to consider before adjourning for the year (possibly by Thanksgiving, but December remains a distinct ...
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S-CORP Fights Proposed Tax Increases As Congress Searches for Revenue
As S-CORP members will recall, this year began with a Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) proposal to impose a nearly 3 percent additional tax on the full distributable share of profits for S corporation shareholders. ...
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S CORP ALLIANCE CONTINUES TO MAKE HEADLINES!
For those who missed it, Monday's Congress Daily does an excellent job of outlining the challenge confronting S Corporations and other flow-through businesses as Congress prepares to take up reconciliation, tax reform, an extension of ...
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INCREASED S CORP SCRUTINY
INCREASED S CORP SCRUTINY -- JULY 28TH, THE HILL Yesterday's "The Hill" takes a look at the two challenges facing the S Corp community today- by modernizing S Corp rules to ensure S Corporations continue ...
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IRS TARGETS S CORPS!
As a follow-up to its broader "Tax Gap" study completed earlier this year, the IRS yesterday announced it will engage in a multi-year study of about 5000 taxpayers reporting S corporation income or losses. According ...
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S CORP ALLIANCE LETTER: 36 SIGNORS AND COUNTING!
Good news! We're up to 36 groups on the S Corp Alliance letter (see attached). Thanks to all who signed on in the last week: American Council of Engineering Companies, Associated Builders and Contractors, Associated ...
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State Update and IRS Issues S Corp Rules
As S-CORP members will recall, S-CORP has been monitoring a number of states considering tax bills that will adversely affect S corporations. We were fortunate to lay the groundwork in Pennsylvania in working with others ...
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S CORP ALLIANCE CONTINUES TO MAKE HEADLINES!
For those who missed it, Monday's Congress Daily does an excellent job of outlining the challenge confronting S Corporations and other flow-through businesses as Congress prepares to take up reconciliation, tax reform, an extension of ...
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