Crunch time on the ERC

Presented by The Coalition to Preserve American Jobs: Delivered every Monday by 10 a.m., Weekly Tax examines the latest news in tax politics and policy.
Mar 18, 2024 View in browser
 
POLITICO's Weekly Tax newsletter logo

By Bernie Becker

Presented by

The Coalition to Preserve American Jobs
Driving the day

LOOKING FOR A BUZZER-BEATER: Supporters of the bipartisan tax bill are increasingly leaning on this message: Don’t expect this kind of opportunity to come around next year, too, no matter who is in control of Washington.

Senate Republicans who don’t like the tax bill in its current form have started more openly asking the question of whether they’d be better served to wait until 2025, when the GOP could be back in control of the chamber and the White House.

But Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has argued that it would be more difficult next year to retroactively restore the tax breaks for businesses that Republicans have sought in this deal, the first of which expired all the way back in 2022.

And there’s this, too: This might be the only chance remaining to stop fraud in the pandemic-era Employee Retention Credit, as Pro Tax’s Brian Faler noted this morning — something Wyden and House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) relied on to pay for almost all of their $78 billion bill.

The IRS continues to process ERC claims, essentially meaning that it’s now or never when it comes to trying to weed out fraudulent applications.

MORE ON THAT IN A BIT, but first thanks for joining this post-St. Patrick’s Day version of Weekly Tax — where we’re also glad to once again have the occasion to ask, “what would the fox say?”

He did need your photograph: Today marks 125 years since an American astronomer named William Henry Pickering discovered Phoebe, the largest irregular moon of Saturn — and the first moon to be discovered via a photograph, which had been taken seven months earlier in Peru.

Do you know something irregular? Tell us about it.

Email: bbecker@politico.com, bfaler@politico.com, bguggenheim@politico.com and teckert@politico.com.

You can also reach us on Twitter at @berniebecker3, @Brian_Faler, @ben_guggenheim, @tobyeckert, @POLITICOPro and @Morning_Tax.

 

A message from The Coalition to Preserve American Jobs:

A recent survey of small business owners confirms the Employee Retention Credit program has been a lifeline for job creators and workers during pandemic recovery. 93% of small businesses that received the credit say it was critical to keeping their business afloat. Congress must ensure the IRS pays out legitimate claims and small businesses receive the relief they are owed. Learn More.

 

MORE ON THE ERC: If the Wyden-Smith plan is enacted, then ERC claims will officially be finished — the bill puts into place a cut-off date of Jan. 31.

But absent any congressional action, claims would spill into next year, which effectively was the last deadline approved by lawmakers.

Business groups have said that plenty of companies are still trying to make legitimate claims for the ERC, which was enacted four years ago to help businesses affected by the coronavirus support their payrolls.

But IRS chief Danny Werfel now estimates that 19 out of every 20 claims is suspect — and his agency, currently facing an ERC backlog that numbers in the seven figures, has taken to process them in slow-motion to try to weed out the questionable applications.

The Wyden-Smith package would give the government a variety of new tools to tamp down on Employee Retention Credit fraud, and with some rather notable exceptions — see Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) — the ERC anti-abuse measures aren’t driving Senate GOP opposition to the legislation.

Still, it’s probably fair to say that right-of-center supporters of the bipartisan tax bill wish that Senate GOP skeptics were more agreeable to the legislation because of that ERC crackdown.

Meanwhile, the tax package has gotten so stuck in the Senate that Wyden’s team went public last week with details about so far fruitless negotiations between the Finance chair and the panel’s top Republican, Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho.

And that at least has to make you wonder how much Democrats are thinking about bringing the tax bill to the floor without a deal with Crapo, and how much they’re trying to show the Senate Republicans who might be open to backing the legislation in that scenario that they tried to reach an agreement.

WHAT HAPPENED HERE? It’s a busy time for Wyden, who also teamed up last week with Senate Budget Chair Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) to press the Justice Department about a settled tax case involving Caterpillar.

The Justice Department conducted an investigation into the construction equipment manufacturer that stretched for years, and could’ve led to the company paying more than $2 billion in back taxes and penalties — and even potential criminal charges.

But as The New York Times reported last week, the department basically dropped that investigation around the time that then-President Donald Trump nominated Bill Barr to be attorney general late in 2018.

Barr, as it happens, had just been one of the high-paid lawyers that Caterpillar employed to battle the Justice Department in that case, which focused on a profit-shifting scheme involving a Swiss subsidiary that the government believed allowed the company to vastly understate its profits.

“In short, it appears that Bill Barr’s work on behalf of CAT minimizing its exposure to federal investigation became the official policy of the Trump DOJ,” Wyden and Whitehouse wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland — noting, among other things, that a key interview in Amsterdam for the case was dropped right around the time of Barr’s nomination, and just hours before it was to begin.

In their letter, first reported by Bloomberg Tax, Wyden and Whitehouse ask Garland for a wide variety of information, including more details on the IRS’s role in the investigation and more insight into the actions of Richard Zuckerman, the top tax official in Trump’s Justice Department who ordered that the interview in question be scrapped.

WATCH OUT FOR IT: It’s been all of 10 days since Congress last avoided a government shutdown, and lawmakers will have a lot of work to do this week to repeat that performance.

Appropriations negotiators had hoped to roll out the latest batch of spending bills — including the one that would fund the Treasury Department and the IRS — on Sunday. Now, those spending proposals are expected as soon as today, just a handful of days before a partial shutdown deadline.

 

JOIN US ON 3/21 FOR A TALK ON FINANCIAL LITERACY: Americans from all communities should be able to save, build wealth, and escape generational poverty, but doing so requires financial literacy. How can government and industry ensure access to digital financial tools to help all Americans achieve this? Join POLITICO on March 21 as we explore how Congress, regulators, financial institutions and nonprofits are working to improve financial literacy education for all. REGISTER HERE.

 
 

Want to receive this newsletter every weekday? Subscribe to POLITICO Pro. You’ll also receive daily policy news and other intelligence you need to act on the day’s biggest stories.

Around the World

Reuters: “In big win for Tesla, India to lower EV import tax if $500 mln invested.”

Bloomberg: “Sunak Eyes Tax Cuts and an Autumn Election — If He Can Survive.”

Reuters, again: “India hikes windfall tax on petroleum.”

 

A message from The Coalition to Preserve American Jobs:

Advertisement Image

 
Around the Nation

Associated Press: “Maryland House pushes higher taxes, online gambling in $1.3B plan for education and transportation.”

Montana Free Press: “Supplemental tax bills heading toward many Montana property owners.”

Kansas Reflector: “New Kansas flat tax proposal would mainly benefit state’s top 20% of earners, analysis shows.”

 

DON’T MISS AN IMPORTANT TALK ON ACCESS TO AFFORDABLE PRESCRIPTION DRUGS IN CA: Join POLITICO on March 19 to dive into the challenges of affordable prescription drugs accessibility across the state. While Washington continues to debate legislative action, POLITICO will explore the challenges unique to California, along with the potential pitfalls and solutions the CA Legislature must examine to address prescription drug affordability for its constituents. REGISTER HERE.

 
 
Also Worth Your Time

New York Times: “The Zombies of the U.S. Tax Code: Why Fossil Fuels Subsidies Seem Impossible to Kill.”

The Wall Street Journal: “We All Want Simpler Taxes. Here’s Why That’s So Complicated.”

Tax Notes: “Construction Site Security Provider Dug Itself a Reporting Hole.”

Did you know?

Saturn’s moon Phoebe is about one-sixteenth the size of the Earth’s moon.

 

A message from The Coalition to Preserve American Jobs:

The Coalition to Preserve American Jobs is made up of national groups representing employers and supporting job creators. We are committed to safeguarding employment-based tax incentives for natural disasters and other emergent circumstances. That’s why we are leading the fight to ensure the IRS stands with the one million+ job creators awaiting funds from Covid-era ERC claims. Join us in ensuring that our government continues to rightly support America’s small businesses when the pandemic began.
Learn more.

 
 

Follow us on Twitter

Toby Eckert @tobyeckert

Bernie Becker @berniebecker3

Brian Faler @brian_faler

Benjamin Guggenheim @ben_guggenheim

 

Follow us

Follow us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Instagram Listen on Apple Podcast
 

To change your alert settings, please log in at https://login.politico.com/?redirect=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.politico.com/settings

This email was sent to salenamartine360.news1@blogger.com by: POLITICO, LLC 1000 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, VA, 22209, USA

Unsubscribe | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service

Post a Comment

Previous Post Next Post