Taxes

Policy Priorities for 2008

• Promote efforts to extend or make permanent the Bush tax cuts.
• Ensure faster cost recovery of capital investment.
• Repeal or substantially reform the alternative minimum tax (AMT).
• Reduce corporate income tax rates.
• Preserve reduced tax rates on capital gains and dividend income.
• Remove competitive tax disadvantages experienced by U.S. multinational corporations.
• Make permanent tax extenders (e.g., the Research and Experimentation Tax Credit as well as the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, which incorporates the Welfare-to-Work Credit).
• Enact enhanced tax-deferred savings vehicles.
• Repeal the tax withholding requirement on all government payments.
• Advance simplification and ease of compliance with the Internal Revenue Code.
• Prevent back-door taxes on businesses through the imposition of revenue offsets made more likely by Congress' re-imposition of PAYGO (Pay-As-You-Go) rules. Anticipated revenue offsets include, but are not limited to, codification of the economic substance doctrine; restriction on or repeal of the LIFO (last-in, first-out) inventory method; imposition of a windfall profits tax on oil; increase in top marginal income tax rate(s); imposition of restrictions on deferred compensation; inclusion of entire S corporation net earnings in shareholders' self-employment tax bases; limitation on the deduction of punitive damages and fines and penalties; repeal of the deduction for domestic production activities; delay or repeal of liberalized worldwide interest allocation rules; taxation of carried interest as ordinary income; and subjecting publicly traded partnerships to corporate taxation.