Senate GOP spikes House tax plans

Business & Economy

The Big Story

Senate GOP rejects House conservative tax pitch

Senate Republicans are tossing cold water on proposals by some House conservatives to raise corporate taxes to help pay for President-elect Trump’s tax agenda.

“Absolutely not,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) said of proposals to raise the corporate tax rate.

“We were trying to be competitive on the world stage when we dropped it to 21 percent,” he said. “To raise that is not the way to get an economy going.”

Some conservatives, notably Rep. Chip Roy (Texas), have floated the idea of raising the corporate tax rate by a few percentage points to ensure the budget reconciliation package Congress plans to pass later this year doesn’t add to the deficit.

More recently, the House Freedom Caucus has floated a proposal to offset the cost of raising the cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions for individuals and families by restricting state and local tax deductions for corporations.

Roy told The Hill in an interview last week that corporate tax increases should be “on the table” as possible pay-fors to keep Trump’s legislation agenda from adding to the nation’s ballooning debt.

“I’m on the record as saying everything should be on the table, and I’m on the record of having said, ‘Why should we just allow corporate taxes to stay in place, or think about lowering them, if … we’re not doing what we need to do on the individual tax rate side or if we’re not balancing the budget or being deficit neutral?’” he said.

The Hill's Alex Bolton has more here.

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