Congressman Darin LaHood and fellow House Republicans revealed how they plan to bring relief to American taxpayers by introducing a comprehensive tax reform bill last week.
With the introduction of this latest bill, the U.S. House Committee on Ways & Means is hoping to put an end to 31 years without comprehensive tax reform in the U.S.
Congressman LaHood says that when putting together this bill, he and his colleagues tried to place an emphasis on the middle class.
“What we focused on on this bill is the middle class and how we can get the economy going. When you look at the bill, this will help with more take-home pay for middle class Americans, and the majority of the people in my district are middle class and they are folks that, over the last twenty years, have worked hard, played by the rules, are raising their families, but they have only seen their taxes go up at the state and local level, and at the federal level, they haven’t much relief there. And what we said was, ‘we want to give these folks a break,'” says LaHood.
The Congressman also discusses some of the other aspects included in the bill, such as doubling standard deductions and increasing the child tax credit.
“Seventy percent of the people that live in our district, they take that standard deduction when they file their taxes, and we double that, meaning they’re going to be able to save more money and have more money in their paycheck, more money that they give back, and less money that the government is taking. We also put a focus on the child tax credit. Right now, it’s about $1,000 tax credit, we bump that up to $1,600, again focusing on families and giving families a break that have children, which again helps the middle class. So this effects families and again help them get the relief that they deserve,” LaHood says.
Another piece of the legislation that directly affects the people of Illinois’ 18th district deals with a specific tax on farm families, the Death Tax or Estate Tax. LaHood explains that his bill looks to repeal that tax which often has negative financial effects on farming families.
“Family farmers have complained for a long time about the death tax. So when a mother or father passes away and they want to pass that farm on to the next generation, they end up getting taxed twice, so if they pay tax on that when they’re alive, then when they die, there’s currently a tax called the death tax, or estate tax on that property that has to be paid again by the next of kin. And what happens a lot of times is that can be a huge amount of money, and so family members might have to sell off part of that property, sometimes they have to sell off equipment to pay for that. We eliminate that in this bill. We are always trying to encourage young people to come back to family farms, to stay in the family farm business, and we think that will help do that,” explains LaHood.
As for the future of this bill, LaHood says he believes the legislation has strong support from his fellow Congressmen.