Warren Asks Congressional Tax Committee to Investigate True Size of Retroactive Tax Breaks for Billionaire Corporations

“Congressional Republicans should not gut health care and food assistance for American familiesto pay for tax breaks for billionaire corporations, especially when those tax breaks have noconceivable purpose besides enriching President Trump’s wealthy friends.”
Text of Letter (PDF)
Washington, D.C. —U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a member of the Senate Finance Committee, wrote to the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), a nonpartisan Congressional committee dedicated to analyzing tax legislation, asking the committee to provide information on the revenue impact of giving billionaire corporations retroactive tax breaks.
The 2017Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, amidst a slew of giveaways to the wealthy and big corporations, ended corporations’ ability to immediately expense research and experimentation (R&E) costs starting in 2022. Since then, companieshave been required to spread outtheir R&E deductions over a 5-year or 15-year window, increasing their overall tax liability.
Now, as Congressional Republicans try to pass their “Big, Beautiful Bill” to give trillions in tax breaks to billionaires and giant corporations,they have proposed restoringR&E expensing and making this tax break retroactive back to 2022.
“[I]t is impossible to incentivize investment decisions already made in the past. Instead, these retroactive tax cuts are likely to represent a huge, one-time cash infusion for corporations that can be used for higher executive pay or shareholder handouts in the form of buybacks and dividends,”said Senator Warren.
Senator Warren asked JCT to provide a breakdown, for each year from 2025 to 2034, of the revenue generated by denying corporations this retroactive tax break.
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