Lankford Emphasizes TCJA’s Benefits for Families and Small Businesses

WASHINGTON, DC – Senator James Lankford (R-OK), member of the Senate Finance Committee, today emphasized the critical impact of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) on American families and small businesses during a hearing on the 2025 tax policy debate and tax avoidance strategies. 

Witnesses for the hearing included Jeff Brabant, Vice President, Federal Government Relations, NFIB; Daniel Bunn, President and CEO, The Tax Foundation; Bob Lord, Senior Advisor on Tax Policy, Patriotic Millionaires; Indivar Dutta-Gupta, Doris Duke Distinguished Visiting Fellow, McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University.

During the hearing, Lankford explained how bonus depreciation impacts investment in manufacturing in America. He also discussed his Charitable Act,which would expand and extend the expired non-itemized deduction for charitable giving to ensure Americans who donate to charities, houses of worship, religious organizations, and other nonprofits of their choice are able to deduct that donation from their federal taxes at a higher level than the previous $300 deduction.

Excerpts

Lankford: I do want to spend some time talking about the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act from 2017, because obviously that’s going to be a big issue for next year. There has been some conversation in presidential election politics lately of saying ‘This only benefited the ultra-wealthy and that it wasn’t a benefit to everyone.’ In fact, Vice President Harris has been quoted by Bloombergas saying that she wants to…‘Get rid of the whole thing’ when she talks about the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. So I do want to spend some time talking about what does that mean? Mr. Bunn, you had mentioned before a statistic about…what’s the percentage of Americans that their taxes actually declined with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act?

Bunn: So there were tax cuts across the board, and if this actually does expire, 62 percent of American households will see their taxes increase. And on average, across those households, across congressional districts, that’s a tax increase of $2,800.

Lankford: So 62 percent of Americans, their taxes are going to increase. The conversation about that we’re only going to do a tax increase for people of $400,000 and up—interestingly enough, $400,000 and up four years ago versus now is almost $500,000 based on inflation. That’s just occurred in the last four years at this point. So $400,000 four years ago would be the equivalent of almost half a million now on that. But that number hasn’t changed on it. It continues to be able to increase. For the qualified business income that Mr.Brabant you talked about, that’s a pretty significant piece of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. You’re talking about if the whole thing just goes away as Vice President Harris is calling for, you’re talking about a very significant increase in taxes for every small business in America.

Brabant: Yep. That’s 9 in 10 small businesses are passed through. And, over 26 million small businesses claim this in 2021. And they’re going to look at a significant tax increase if it goes away.

Lankford: Thank you. I’ve also been very interested in the concept that the richest—the ultra-rich, super rich—I’ve heard all the different terms, are not paying in taxes. I’d love to bring some facts to the conversation on this, actually, from the Joint Committee on Taxation, the nonpartisancommittee that this committee has to be able to work with to be able to get our nonpartisanfacts. Yesterday, they put out a statement, just as they’re looking back. They looked at 2017 tax bill, the first year after that, they’ve got all the records for it from 2019 now from that year to May. We’ll look at it. What happened with the ultra-rich in 2019, they looked at the top .01 percent of earners—top .01 percent of earners—that’s 16,000 filers in America, the top 16,000 filers in America. And they said their average federal tax rate for 2019 was a 34 percent tax rate…

Lankford: … Several of you have mentioned actually the bonus depreciation piece, which is a piece I work on a lot. Mr. Bunn, talk to me a little bit about that bonus depreciation and what that means for investment in manufacturing in America.

Bunn: So among economists, this is the area where there’s most agreement that from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, this was the biggest impact for investment—biggest bang for the buck. And looking forward we’ve done analysis looking at different options for extending the different policies in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and it is the most impactful. You know, it is certainly still a tax cut, but for per dollar of tax cut, you’re getting the most bang for the buck on growth. And it limits the amount of time that different businesses have to think about their depreciation schedules and what assets are in what class and when they’re able to get their deductions. It’s a real simplification and big bang for the buck on growth.

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