House speaker promises tax overhaul this year
Despite chaos, business leaders begin lobbying
Washington — House Speaker Paul Ryan insisted on Thursday that Congress will overhaul the U.S. tax system this year despite the chaos consuming Washington and the political divisions in Congress.
“I feel very confident we can meet this goal,” Ryan, R-Wis., told reporters.
Ryan was bolstered by skittish business leaders who began an aggressive lobbying effort to ensure that their vision for a tax overhaul isn’t lost in the daily distractions of President Donald Trump’s administration.
The conservative Koch brothers’ political network announced it is preparing to spend millions of dollars toward that end. The announcement came on the same day a handful of business executives told a congressional committee that the current tax system makes U.S. companies uncompetitive.
“We no longer live in a world where the U.S. can set a corporate tax rate without considering what our international competition looks like,” John Stephen, AT&T’s chief financial officer, told the House Ways and Means Committee. “Countries are vigorously competing against each other to attract investment and jobs, but the U.S. has done little to retain its competitive advantage.”
The Trump administration released a one-page tax proposal last month that included massive tax cuts for businesses, a bigger standard tax deduction for middle-income families, lower investment taxes for the wealthy, and an end to the federal estate tax for the very rich.
Thirty-one years after the last overhaul, there is widespread agreement that the current tax system is too complicated and picks too many winners and losers, compelling companies to make business decisions based on tax implications instead of sound business reasons.
But there are deep political and practical disagreements over how to fix it.
“I do believe that there are very serious and legitimate concerns to any version of tax reform, and we’re going to have to accommodate those concerns as we move to a new tax system,” Ryan said.