Congressman Young Holds Tax Reform Roundtable In Warsaw
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Jennifer Peryam-jperyam@timesuniononline.com
Indiana District 9 Congressman and U.S. House Ways and Means Committee member Todd Young met with local business leaders Wednesday in Warsaw to discuss tax reform. Young met with approximately 25 local leaders, including Mark Dobson, Warsaw-Kosciusko County Chamber of Commerce president, at Mad Anthony’s Lake City Tap House. Roundtables are being hosted across the state by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce and the local Chamber of Commerce in each area. As the House Ways and Means Committee and Senate Finance Committee prepare to roll out reforms to the U.S. tax code, Young is holding a statewide tour to discuss the tax code. Young discussed efforts in the House and U.S. Senate to reform the nation’s tax code. “Right now our tax code makes us uncompetitive for job creation and business development that burdens our smaller businesses and individual Americans,” Young said. He said the objective in the reform effort is to lower tax rates and lighten the burden on Americans. He said in order to lower the tax rate, the government needs input from business leaders and Hoosiers. “We haven’t fundamentally overhauled our tax system in a quarter of a century, and since the 1986 reforms our code has been larded up with provisions that only benefit narrow interests,” Young said. “The net effect is a tax code that is confusing, complex and difficult for individuals and small businesses to comply with. As we try to spur our economy, making the code simpler, fairer and flatter is key,” he continued. Young said to establish an effective tax code tax, preferences need to be eliminated that he said are called tax “loopholes.” “That will allow us to bring more money into the government. which in turn allows us to lower tax rates so in the end this is not a tax raising exercise,” Young said. “It is to simplify the code, make it fair and to lower tax rates for individuals and small businesses as well as large corporations.” Young said the U.S. currently has the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world, and many small businesses are paying more than 50 percent of their profits to the federal government in taxes. Young also discussed the need to repeal the medical device tax. He is a co-sponsor of the bill to repeal the tax, and said the tax is causing many of the medical device companies to look at relocating their new operations overseas because of the punishing tax environment in the U.S. “Our government is putting medical device companies in an untenable position, and I want to repeal the medical device tax all together,” Young said.
