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Regulation and Compliance > Legislation

House Panel Advances Tax Bill With 100% Bonus Depreciation

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Update, Jan. 31: The House passed the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act Wednesday evening. The bill now heads to the Senate.

The House Ways and Means Committee passed by a 40-3 vote Friday new bipartisan legislation, the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024, which includes 100% bonus depreciation as well as research and development expensing and also expands the Child Tax Credit.

The bill moves to the House floor.

The bill, agreed to on Jan. 16 by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., also expands the small-business expensing cap, increasing the amount of investment that a small business can immediately write off to $1.29 million from the $1 million cap enacted in 2017.

Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., said during the Friday morning markup that “right now, small and midsize businesses are getting hammered by interest rates that are the highest in 23 years. Restoring this provision will create more than 850,000 jobs and $58 billion in additional take-home pay for workers.”

The bill, Smith stated, “contains important provisions that individually have bipartisan support. Democrats have voted to extend R&D expensing. Republicans created the Child Tax Credit and support minimum work requirements to promote a connection to the workforce and greater prosperity.”

The bill also expands 100% expensing, Smith continued, “which allows employers to fully deduct the cost of equipment and machines that increase productivity and worker wages. When this policy was originally implemented, investment in American businesses grew 20%,” Smith said.

Under the bill, “investment will grow by an additional $400 billion,” Smith said. “Restoring this policy will increase wages, create more than 70,000 jobs, and incentivize more companies to bring their manufacturing back to the United States.”

The Wyden-Smith agreement “would restore three major business provisions (100% bonus depreciation, R&D expensing for domestic R&D only, and a looser limitation on business interest deductions) through 2025,” Erica York, senior economist and research manager at the Tax Foundation in Washington, told ThinkAdvisor in a previous interview.

York told ThinkAdvisor Friday that “the deal moves in the right direction by temporarily improving the tax treatment of R&D and other business investments,” and that “It’s a promising sign of fiscal responsibility that lawmakers have identified a payfor to offset the cost of the tax changes.”

However, “it’s unfortunate that the deal is short-term,” York added. “Allowing the provisions to expire undermines their effectiveness and adds to taxpayer uncertainty.”

Child Tax Credit

The bill increases the maximum refundable amount per child to $1,800 in tax year 2023, $1,900 in tax year 2024 and $2,000 in tax year 2025. The $2,000 value of the child tax credit would be adjusted for inflation in tax years 2024 and 2025, rounded down to the nearest $100.

Smith said the provision “will ensure that parents can finally catch a break by building on the current child tax credit that supports families and rewards work.”

The new changes to the Child Tax Credit “would increase the amount that can be received as a refund and inflation adjust the maximum among other changes to the credit that would all last through 2025,” York said.

Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., stated during the Friday markup that “while this bill is a start towards the future America’s children deserve, more could’ve been done. Republicans are once again letting politics get in the way of good policy for America’s working families by refusing to expand the Child Tax Credit to include our country’s poorest children. If Democrats had our way, we’d have gone further. We know that when you grow the middle class, you grow the economy.”

Democrats wanted to revive the now-expired expansion of the Child Tax Credit from 2021 under the American Rescue Plan, which provided eligible families with up to $300 per month for each child under the age of 6, up to $3,600 a year per child.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains that the expansion would be in effect for three years, and would affect 16 million children.

“While modest in size, the proposal would have a significant impact,” the Center said.

In the first year, more than 80% “of the roughly 19 million children under 17 in families with low incomes who don’t now get the full credit would benefit — about 16 million children. This includes nearly 3 million children under age 3,” the Center reported.

Will the Tax Bill Become Law?

Jeff Bush of The Washington Update told ThinkAdvisor Friday that the legislation “still has a few hurdles to cross in order to pass. Detractors on both sides of the aisle suggest the effort doesn’t go far enough or complain it goes too far.”

Also, “will it be done in time to get attached to the budget resolution or will they try and bring it up as a stand alone bill?” Bush said, adding that the latter route was ”a much harder path to passage.”

That said, Bush believes “it will pass and in time to be retroactive. There are enough needed clean-up provisions in it to carry a majority of both chambers, and both parties have provisions they want to tout on the campaign trail.”


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