12/08/2017

Conferees to Discuss Changes to Tax Bill

The legislation contains a host of issues that need to be ironed out

Congressional leaders have named the conferees who will work to narrow differences between the House and Senate tax bills.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX) signaled he is open to discussing major changes to the bill in conference, including whether to hike the corporate tax rate to 22 percent from the current 20 percent in order to find revenue to pay for a more generous state and local tax deduction or possibly to kill off the corporate Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). There are a host of other issues to be ironed out as well, such as whether to increase the refundable child tax credit and whether to try to fully repeal the estate tax.

Congressional Republicans are still confident they can send a final tax bill to President Donald Trump’s desk by the end of the year and they’re looking to conferees to resolve the lingering differences in the bills.

Democratic conferees have said they will challenge provisions in the Senate bill that may violate the Byrd rule, a condition of the budget reconciliation process that prohibits legislation that increases the deficit outside the 10-year budget window or “extraneous” provisions that do not produce a change in outlays or revenues.

The American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) and other associations are still working on several issues in the tax bill, but were successful in having a provision to tax royalty income removed from the Senate tax bill before it passed last week. ASAE and others also advocated against a provision that eliminated non-qualified deferred compensation plans that was removed from both the House and Senate bills during markup. ASAE will be monitoring the conference closely to be sure these provisions are not added back to the tax bill as legislators search for additional revenue to pay for other priorities.

This article was provided to OSAE by the Power of A and ASAE's Inroads.