House Committee on Ways & Mean
Washington DC – by: Jordan Silverman The House Committee on Ways and Means released their highly anticipated Tax Reform Act of 2014. The bill appears to adhere to the two main goals of all tax reform efforts; which are to (1) make the tax code more simple and fair for individuals, families and employers, and to (2) strengthen the economy so that more jobs may be created and maintained.
Analysis of the Tax Reform Act of 2014 has been conducted by the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) with promising results. According to the JCT, the Tax Reform Act of 2014, if passed, would create up to about 1.8 million new private sector jobs. Despite these projections, the number of potential jobs that this bill could generate would be significantly higher if the bill included the ASSET plan for estate tax reform. The current bill is noticeably quiet with regard to reforming the estate tax as a part of more comprehensive reform efforts, which would only add to the number of potential jobs to be created.
The ASSET plan, which is entirely voluntary, would help to simplify the collection methods of the estate tax and create an alternative to the overly complicated, unfair system that has forced private businesses and farms to go out of business thereby costing people jobs. With the ASSET plan, taxpayers would have the option of paying a minimal annual surcharge instead of paying a large estate tax sum upon their death. The ASSET plan would also implement a general IRS policy that would help make use of unproductive assets currently being held in trusts designed as a part of estate tax avoidance strategies.
As it was set out above, the main goals of the proposed ASSET Solution for estate tax reform are identical to those put forth in the Tax Reform Act of 2014. The ASSET plan would (1) make the tax code more simple and fair to the average taxpayer, and (2) create numerous private sector jobs through the release of unproductive assets from trusts. Therefore, it would seem commonsensical here, for the benefit of the American taxpayers and the overall economy of the U.S., to include the ASSET plan as an amendment to the proposed Tax Reform Act of 2014.
