AFP: Chairman Brady Right to Remove Tax-Extenders from Year-End Legislation

Dec 13, 2018 by AFP

ARLINGTON, Va. – In response to reports of tax extenders being removed from year-end tax legislation Americans for Prosperity Chief Government Affairs Officer Brent Gardner issued the following statement:

“Tax extenders have no place in a post-tax reform world, and we’re encouraged to see Chairman Brady remove them from his year-end tax legislation. Corporate welfare and cronyism unfairly rig the system in favor of special interests at everyone else’s expense. Chairman Brady’s leadership on tax reform was critical to creating a more fair and just tax code, and we’re hopeful he’ll continue to build on that success by working to eliminate corporate welfare in all forms and stand strong against any efforts to write these extenders back in.”

ICYMI: Kevin Brady proposes to drain the swamp by ending the corrupt ‘tax extenders’ | Washington Examiner Editorial Board

Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 should have taught Republicans a thing or two about doing business as usual.

Top congressional tax writer Kevin Brady may have gotten the message. Rep. Brady, R-Texas, who is chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, has proposed an end-of-year tax bill that abandons one of the swamp’s most revered holiday traditions, the corporate tax extenders.

The “extenders” are corrupt in two ways.

First, they are mostly special-interest tax credits that serve to enrich the well-connected while complicating the tax code.

The current extenders package, included in the Senate bill, would keep alive a tax credit for electric vehicles. This is a subsidy for billionaire Elon Musk and the wealthy people who can afford his Teslas. Homebuilders benefit from the extenders’ tax credit for energy-efficient new homes. Biodiesel, wind power, and other green power technologies would get special tax breaks as well.

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This is all corporate welfare in which the insiders get special breaks the outsiders can’t.

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The lobbyists are the key to the second corrupt element of the extenders: the regular renewal.

Special tax credits generally make no sense, but they make even less sense when they expire every two years, only to be renewed every two years, sometimes retroactively. You don’t spur investment with uncertainty, but you certainly don’t spur investment with retroactive tax credits — that’s just giving away money.

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Instead of extending these special-interest breaks, Brady has proposed a year-end tax bill that abolishes targeted tax hikes, many of which are from Obamacare.

Because Brady’s bill would simplify the code and pull the rug out from under the lobbyists and the future lobbyists (that is, senators, congressmen, and their staff), it has the odds stacked against it — but so does any effort to drain the swamp.

For further information or to set up an interview, please send an email to GBraud@afphq.org.

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