No death tax hikes in 117th Congress
Thank you for your support during another year of fighting back against a barrage of harmful tax hikes on family businesses.
TIA’s main focus was pushing back on language advanced by the House Ways and Means Committee, which would have cut the current unified estate, gift, and GST exemptions in half and wreaked havoc on family estate plans, making it harder to pass family businesses on to the next generation of ownership.
Many of our letters made a splash on the hill and in the media. In addition, we met with several critical offices (mostly moderate Democrats) with requests that they share their constituents’ concerns with Democratic leadership. The small business and agriculture communities deserve a lot of credit for locking arms and digging in against these tax hikes. Chairman Neal decided against including the estate tax provisions in the House's BBB bill, telling Bloomberg that “enough members had raised concerns..” about the proposals.
In addition to the harmful House language, new ideas to tax family businesses seemed to come from all angles this Congress. Chairman Wyden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, House Democrats, and the Biden administration all proposed changes that would have taxed unrealized gains both annually and at death. They threw everything at the wall, but as it stands now, the 2017 tax relief for family businesses remains fully intact.
118th Congress outlook
Over the next two years under a divided government, we expect some unpleasantness involving regulatory changes for family businesses. TIA will stay highly vigilant regarding proposed changes to valuation discounts or GRATS.
We have promised our continued support to Sen. Minority Whip Thune and Congressman Jason Smith on their bicameral legislation to eliminate the death tax (155 House and 37 Senate cosponsors currently) to solidify as much support as possible before Congress takes up tax reform again. TIA will continue to make the case for tax permanence and full repeal of the unfair and economically destructive death tax while standing guard against new regulatory overreach. We are now one year closer to the expiration of most small business tax relief in 2025, and the work to achieve the best results in the next tax reform package must continue.
IRS Announces New Deputy Chief for the Taxpayer Experience Office
The Internal Revenue Service announced Courtney Kay-Decker as the new deputy chief taxpayer experience officer.
Under the leadership of Chief Taxpayer Experience Officer Ken Corbin, Kay-Decker will lead IRS efforts to improve the taxpayer experience including driving the strategy for taxpayer interactions, monitoring and prioritizing the taxpayer experience, coordinating identification of taxpayer trends and best practices, and collaborating on the implementation of Service-wide taxpayer experience improvements.
“Courtney brings a wealth of experience in tax and proven skill managing programs designed to improve the taxpayer experience,” said Ken Corbin, Chief Taxpayer Experience Officer. “Her career has ranged from practitioner to state tax administrator, volunteer tax preparer to tax law teacher. Each of these roles has helped her build deep knowledge of stakeholders in the tax ecosystem and will help her spearhead efforts to identify new strategies to improve taxpayer interactions.”
Prior to her selection, Kay-Decker served as an attorney at Lane & Waterman LLP in Davenport, Iowa, where her areas of practice included tax and administrative matters. From 2011 to 2019, she served as Director of the Iowa Department of Revenue. As director, Kay-Decker focused on improving administrative rules, guidance, and processes to simplify and reduce compliance burdens for the taxpayers of Iowa. She also served on the Board of Trustees of the Federation of Tax Administrators.
Additionally, Kay-Decker served as the first state co-chair of the Identity Theft and Tax Refund Fraud Information Sharing Analysis Center, a collaboration among the IRS, state tax agencies and industry partners who work to develop tools and protocols to detect and prevent identity theft tax refund fraud. She’s served as a Volunteer Income Tax Assistance site coordinator and as a member of the Electronic Tax Administration Advisory Committee.
Kay-Decker received her B.A. degree in economics from Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and holds a J.D. with distinction from the University of Iowa College of Law where she also serves as an adjunct lecturer.
The Taxpayer Experience Office, formally established earlier this year, leads the effort to improve customer service at the IRS by focusing on six key strategies identified in the President's Executive Order on Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government, and the Taxpayer First Act Report to Congress.
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