Washington Wire

More than a Dime’s Worth of Difference

March 14, 2024|

Two events took place this week which demonstrate just how remarkably divergent the potential paths of tax policy are next year.

First, the Senate Finance Committee held a rare hearing Tuesday on the challenges faced by American manufacturers. Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) took the opportunity to highlight the importance of 199A to his manufacturers in Montana and how Congress needs to act to make it permanent.



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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 36: The CTA Compliance Wrinkle No One’s Talking About

March 9, 2024|

The Corporate Transparency Act is now in effect, imposing complex reporting requirements on every small business in the country, and many large ones too. But what if the person best equipped to assist those businesses with compliance – your local CPA –wasn’t allowed to do so?

To explore this dynamic, we talked to Jim Hamill, Director of Tax Practice at the Albuquerque-based accounting firm Reynolds, Hix, and Company and an Associate Professor of Accounting at Texas

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CTA’s Prospects, Post-NSBA v. Yellen

March 7, 2024|

Friday’s District Court decision declaring the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) unconstitutional is garnering lots of attention. As the Wall Street Journal editorial board noted, “The judgment is a legal bullet dodged for millions of small businesses that would be smacked this year by the new reporting requirements.”

The ruling is a massive victory for the Main Street business community, no doubt, but its real-world implications remain to be determined. The ruling is not a

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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 35: Tax Foundation’s Scott Hodge on the Outsized Role that Taxes Play in Our Daily Lives

March 2, 2024|

Our latest guest is Scott Hodge, who is president emeritus at the Tax Foundation and author of the excellent new book Taxocracy: What You Don’t Know About Taxes and How They Rule Your Daily Life. Through the lens of history’s most ill-conceived taxes – like the “chicken tax” and 17th century “window tax” – Scott explains how tax policy shapes virtually every aspect of our lives and drives human behavior. He and Brian then discuss

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Court CTA Ruling a Huge Win for Main Street

March 2, 2024|

Huge news to kick off the weekend — a federal judge just ruled that the Corporate Transparency Act is unconstitutional, marking the end of a 16-month legal battle led by the National Small Business Association and supported by S-Corp and the members of our Main Street Employers coalition.

By way of background, the CTA is a sprawling new data collection regime that would have required

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The “Experts” Get 199A Wrong

February 20, 2024|

When Congress finishes work on the tax package pending in the Senate, we expect the conversation to pivot rapidly to what we should do about all those expiring TCJA provisions at the end of 2025.

For S-Corp and its allies, our priority is to make the Section 199A deduction permanent and a big hurdle there is the lack of understanding of how pass-throughs are taxed and why the Section 199A small business deduction is

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FinCEN in the House

February 13, 2024|

The head of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) will testify tomorrow before the House Financial Services Committee (HFSC). The hearing will focus on the Corporate Transparency Act’s implementation and is a good opportunity for Congress to learn more about this trainwreck of a law and why it should be repealed.

The Corporate Transparency Act claims to target so-called shell corporations engaged in illicit transactions like money laundering and terrorism finance, but the law

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Talking Taxes in a Truck Episode 34: Piper Sandler’s Don Schneider on the Tax Package’s Fate, Looming Debt and Deficit Crisis, and Monetary Policy Outlook

February 5, 2024|

The House last week moved a large tax package. Will the Senate follow suit? To answer that and other burning questions, we spoke to Don Schneider, Deputy Head of U.S. Policy at Piper Sandler and the former Chief Economist at Ways & Means. Don explains why it might be too early to pop the champagne on the House-passed tax bill. Later he discusses the worsening spending crisis, what to expect from the Fed over the

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