Federal Spotlight – Tax Reform Continues to Advance

November 16, 2017

The last several weeks you have no doubt listened to the radio and/or read articles discussing federal tax reform. Last week at this time the Senate had just released their version of tax reform, which varied slightly from the House version. Both the House and Senate bills have seen changes to address some concerns by stakeholders; however, there are still differences in the bills. The House is expected to vote on the bill as early as today. The Senate surprised many by proposing to remove the individual mandate for health insurance, which would save $300 billion over 10 years. The Senate bill also has several other key differences from the House bill including proposing to make the individual income tax cuts temporary, repealing the state and local tax deduction entirely and changing restrictions on pass-through income. The Senate Finance Committee is expected to pass their bill this week while the House passed their version of tax reform Thursday afternoon by a vote of 227-205. The goal is to get bills passed in both chambers, work out the differences in conference committee and then send that final product to President Trump’s desk by the end of the year.