Congressman LaHood shares views on potential US tax reform

By Gary Scott on October 16, 2017 at 6:04am

Much has been made of President Trump’s potential plan to reform the US tax system.

On Wednesday, President Trump and the “Big Six” Republicans introduced their latest version of their plan to overhaul the country’s tax system, however, plenty of questions remain unanswered.

Illinois Congressman Darin LaHood, a Republican representing the state’s 18th district, has been in Washington D.C. while the White House tries to work out a tax reform. He explains all the things he and his fellow congressmen are trying to accomplish.

“What we do is, we reduce the tax brackets on the personal side from seven down to three, we make the tax code simpler, we eliminate a lot of the loopholes and a lot of the provisions that have been put in the tax code over the last thirty years by lobbyists and special interests, and we try to simplify the tax code so that it’s easy for people to file their taxes. Right now it’s very cumbersome, it’s very complicated. We want to make it so that ninety percent of the American people can file their taxes on a post card every year,” LaHood explains.

Congressman LaHood discusses the idea of providing tax relief to Illinois businesses.

“The second thing is we give businesses, whether you’re a mainstream business in Jacksonville, Illinois or Springfield or Peoria, we give you tax relief if you’re a business. And our thought on that is, we want to get the economy roaring again in the United States and we believe tax reform will do that. So if you’re a mom-and-pop or small business, or you’re a large business like Caterpillar (Inc.) or John Deere or State Farm, we reduce your business tax rate,” says LaHood.

He explains why he believes the United States needs to bring down its corporate tax rate.

“Right now, the corporate tax rate is between thirty-six and forty percent, it’s the highest in the industrialized world, we bring that down to twenty-twenty-five percent. And our thought is, if you bring that down and you talk to businesses, what they will tell you is, they will take the savings they get from that and put it into hiring more workers, higher wages, into reinvesting in the company, maybe you put on an addition, maybe you add an extra piece of equipment. We think that will help the economy get on track and get us to a growth rate that is not at one percent growth, but how do we get to three or four percent growth? We think tax reform will do that,” explains LaHood.

LaHood says the goal is to have some sort of tax reform passed in the House of Representatives by Thanksgiving, and that he believes it would be beneficial to those living in central and west central Illinois and across the US.