Issue Position: Reform the Tax Code to Help Small Businesses

Issue Position

In order to prepare our economy to be mission ready for the long-term, I support smart, simplified, and comprehensive tax reform to help small businesses prosper and hire additional workers. If every small business in the 6th district was able to hire one additional worker, we could make back all of the jobs lost to outsourcing between 2001 and 2013. To achieve this goal, we need to lower the tax rate on small businesses, while closing the loopholes letting big businesses off the hook.

Most politicians view taxes in the United States as a binary question: "Do we tax more or less?" Instead of glossing over the tax code, my stance is that taxes need to be comprehensively reformed. For example, I support closing the Water's Edge loophole, which allows companies to hide domestic income in overseas bank accounts, while also adopting Combined Reporting for all multinational businesses. Combined Reporting allows for simple, unified tax reporting for large corporations, making it easier for businesses to file and harder to avoid paying taxes on hidden profits.

Small businesses bear the burden as Congress adds complexity to the tax code. To help small business grow, Congress should not simply add taxes upon taxes or loopholes into loopholes. This is a short-term fix and only increases complexity and hurts taxpayers and small business alike. A new generation of leadership in Congress is needed to transform our tax code in a comprehensive, cohesive manner that stresses smart, simple taxation to help small businesses and the middle class.

I believe that taxes in the United States, on both the corporate and personal level, are generally too high. They remain so high due to the large number of loopholes that allow major corporations and wealthy citizens to pay well less than their fair share. In fact, tax haven abuses alone cost the U.S. nearly $150 billion in tax revenues each year, which ultimately are supplemented by small businesses and citizens. Small businesses and the middle class therefore have to pick up the bill and also face high fixed costs for compliance. By reforming the tax code to help small businesses, we can jumpstart our most powerful engine of economic development, employment, and innovation.

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