The Senate Finance Committee will consider a raft of 17 tax bills Wednesday affecting a number of items spanning from military spouses’ professional licenses to the taxation of cider.
Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said the mark-up of the bills “is an opportunity for the committee to clear the deck and advance common-sense tax bills that have garnered strong bipartisan support within the Congress.”
Most of the provisions would lift taxes on specific groups or industries, although none would cost the Treasury even $100 million over 10 years.
The biggest winner would be small insurers, whose tax treatment would be changed to the tune of $84 million in revenue.
Military husbands and wives who would lose their professional licensing or accreditation when their families moved states for work would receive a $500 credit. That break would reduce revenue by $79 million over 10 years.
Another bill would set taxes on liquefied natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas, such as propane and butane, to the same rate on the energy equivalent of gasoline and diesel, respectively. The legislation would lower taxes by $54 million.
Federal laws surrounding hard cider also would be reshaped by one of the bills. It would change the definition of cider to place it in a lower excise tax bracket, saving producers $12 million. The bill also would expand the definition of cider to include pear cider as well as apple cider, and increase the allowable alcohol content of cider to 8.5 percent alcohol by volume.
Other provisions to be considered would exclude clean coal energy grants from taxable income, lower taxes on real estate investment trusts, and lower taxes on the pay benefits the survivors of slain police officers receive.
