Tax Working Groups Submit Reports to Senate Finance

The Senate Finance Committee’s five bipartisan tax writing working groups submitted their reports Wednesday to the committee’s leaders on ways to reform the tax code.

The reports provide tax reform recommendations for the Committee to consider as it contemplates comprehensive tax reform in five areas: individual income tax; business income tax; savings & investment; international tax; and community development & infrastructure.

As the committee notes, while each report is a bipartisan product of each group’s co-chairs, unless otherwise stated, the materials presented are not necessarily endorsed, in whole or in part, by each member of each working group.

The tax working group plans incorporate public comments each group received earlier this year.

“Any remake of the U.S. tax code should work to lower the rates and broaden the base. We need to simplify the code and make it easier for families and create a system to keep American job creators competitive around the globe,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, in a statement. “Now, armed with new ideas, I plan to work with Senator Wyden to review each working group’s report and examine how they can be used to further advance the Committee’s efforts to achieve this bipartisan goal.”

Ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., added in the statement that the committees’ “constructive feedback and ideas are essential as we push ahead toward our shared goal of modernizing the tax code.”

Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Rob Portman, R-Ohio, co-chairmen of the working group on international tax reform, said they recommended tax reforms that include “transitioning to a hybrid, territorial-like system, patent boxes, base erosion, deemed repatriation, and other major areas.”

The bipartisan agreement, they said, “draws from elements included in prior international reform efforts” put forth by President Barack Obama and former House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp.

“Our international tax system is upside down and inside out. It creates incentives to send jobs and stash profits overseas, rather than creating jobs and economic growth here in the United States,” Schumer said in a statement. “These proposals would right the ship, provide a potential funding source for transportation reauthorization, and allow the United States to compete on a level playing field.”