Influential anti-tax activist Grover Norquist is pushing Republican leaders to speed up their efforts to rewrite the U.S. tax code.
“Given the importance of this issue, we believe it is imperative that the House of Representatives make significant progress in the first hundred days of the Trump administration toward passing comprehensive, pro-growth tax reform,” read a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, dated Monday.
“Passage of tax reform that simplifies and updates the code is key toward encouraging economic growth, creating more jobs and higher wages, and promoting innovation and ingenuity,” reads the letter written by Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform and signed by 30 other conservative, business and anti-tax groups.
“As you know, it has been more than 30 years since comprehensive tax reform was last signed into law,” the letter states. “Since then, our foreign competitors have drastically reduced their rates, simplified their codes, and updated their systems to be globally competitive.”
Ryan has pledged to move tax reform by the annual August recess.
He has proposed paying for lowering the corporate tax rate to 20 percent by enacting “border adjustability.”
Under border adjustability, the U.S. would tax imports but not exports.
Republicans agree they want to change the tax code but exactly how to do so is where consensus gets harder to find.
Already different state delegations and interests are bristling about losing special deductions or tax advantages.
“The fact is we can’t tweak this too much from what was presented or we lose the 20 percent … we lose the other rates,” Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., said Monday. “The changes to border adjustability tax of what deductions are allowed, only mortgage interest up to $1 million mortgages, charitable deductions or double the standard deduction … that’s kinda it,” he said.
“You’ve got all these special interests now that are starting to rally their troops come to offices. That’s where someone would suggest: Are we going to get unanimity, which is what we need? I don’t expect Democrats to help us [so] it’s still, I would say, our plan to get unanimity in our conference — 218 votes — and get it done in the 200-day agenda. But only time will tell if that’s going to work out.”
Collins says he’s confident Republicans will coalesce around a plan but is not as sure about the timing.
“It’s all kind of premature,” he said. It’s a big deal. Getting it done by August “is not a slam dunk.”
