Chairman Dave Camp Will Release Tax Reform Draft Proposal Next Week – WE NEED YOUR HELP

All indications are that Chairman Dave Camp of the House Ways and Means Committee will release a discussion draft tax reform proposal next week. He was originally expected to release a proposal last fall, but press reports indicated his efforts were delayed by the Republican Caucus leadership. Chairman Camp sent a memo to House Ways and Means Republican members yesterday, telling them that next week he “will release a comprehensive discussion draft to overhaul our tax code to make it: (1) simpler and fairer for families and employers, and (2) strengthen our economy – meaning higher wages and more take home pay for the American worker.”

ANA needs your help. Please contact members of the House Ways and Means Committee that your company has close relationships with and stress to them the importance of maintaining the full deductibility of advertising expenditures.  A list of Committee members can be found here, and a list of key staffers is available here. In order to help guide your outreach messaging, ANA has put together a list of talking points. Additionally, we have put together a website with a number of materials on the ad tax threat, including an economic study demonstrating the benefits of advertising.

While noting in his memo that many in Washington do not want to move forward on tax reform given the political implications at stake, Chairman Camp says that it is time to take on the special interests. Although the advertising deduction has never been seen as a “special interest” exemption before, all indications are that the Chairman plans to amortize 50 percent of tax deductibility over a period of years. Last fall we heard that he would propose to amortize the costs over a ten year period, although now we are hearing that he may seek to amortize the deduction over a five year period, similar to the proposal put forward by former Senator Max Baucus last November. Tell Chairman Camp and members of the House Ways and Means Committee that advertising is part of the lifeblood of our economy, not a special interest exemption to raid for lost dollars elsewhere.

ANA is already working to respond quickly and effectively to any threat that may surface from Chairman Camp’s discussion draft. As you will recall, last fall we asked all our members to reach out to key members of the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees with whom they have close relationships to stress the importance of preserving ad deductibility. Today we are renewing that call.