MORE ON THE CTC: To put it bluntly, there would be some dissonance in the Trump-Vance ticket fully embracing a much larger child tax credit. After all, a large group of Senate Republicans just joined together to block bipartisan legislation that included a comparatively modest expansion of the CTC. To be fair, some of the GOP senators’ motivation was driven by political tactics. Republicans believe they have a quite good chance to regain the Senate in November, which would put them more in the driver’s seat for a wide range of tax issues in 2025. But a good number of Senate Republicans also took issue with how the CTC expansion crafted by Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) was constructed, arguing that it would chip away at incentives for recipients to work. So it’s interesting to note that Vance has said a bigger child credit should be available to “all American families,” which at the very least leaves the implication that he could be open to making the CTC fully refundable. (The Trump campaign official’s statement to Semafor merely said it should “apply to American families.”) The stance hinted at by Vance would be far from a majority position among Republicans, though it also remains to be seen whether the Trump camp actually follows through on a CTC proposal and how much detail they might be prepared to offer. In any event, the progressives who have been pushing for a larger CTC for these last several years don’t see any downside to getting support from major party candidates, even if they’re skeptical about how sincerely the Trump-Vance ticket is in backing an expanded child credit or their potential follow-through. And also not for nothing: Democrats do seem to have more common ground, when all’s said and done, about where they want to go with the child credit. For instance, a House bill to expand the CTC that was introduced last year by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), and has gained the support of the vast majority of the Democrats in the chamber, also includes larger payments for newborns, though not quite to the $6,000 level proposed by Harris. DRIP, DRIP, DRIP: Virginia’s two Democratic senators have added themselves to the list of lawmakers urging the IRS to move more quickly to process Employee Retention Credit claims. A letter from Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner to IRS chief Danny Werfel strikes a similar note to what other lawmakers from both parties have told the IRS — that they understand the agency is facing a difficult task, given the potential number of improper claims the agency might be sitting on. But still, actual companies with legitimate applications are still waiting, so get moving, as Kaine and Warner told the IRS, in essence. Kaine and Warner told Werfel that lots of businesses in their state couldn’t get an answer from the agency about the status of their claims, while the two senators’ offices didn’t have much better luck. “Simply put, this is unacceptable,” they wrote. The IRS announced earlier this month that it was pulling back on a moratorium on processing new claims of the ERC, which was intended to help companies that kept paying employees even after business was suspended during the coronavirus pandemic. The agency then said last week that it was launching another round of its voluntary disclosure program for the credit — allowing recipients who now think they might not have been eligible, perhaps because of aggressive promoters, to pay back most of what they received and avoid any future audits. Next up: Checking to see if more lawmakers nudge the IRS to move more swiftly on the credit, particularly now that it looks like Congress won’t be swooping in to give the agency much assistance on the ERC. (The Wyden-Smith plan proposed ending the incentive as of Jan. 31, to help pay for the expansion of the CTC, the revival of key tax breaks for businesses and other provisions.)
| 
No comments:
Post a Comment