CEI Joins Coalition Letter Opposing Revival of Expired Tax Extenders

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Dear Speaker Pelosi, Leader McConnell, Leader McCarthy, and Leader Schumer,

Over 16 months ago, a package of temporary business tax breaks known as “tax extenders” were allowed to expire.

On behalf of our organizations and the broader public interest, we are writing to urge you to ignore calls from special interests to revive these zombie extenders. Let what is dead remain dead.

Though our organizations span the political spectrum, we all agree that it is time to stop making tax policy one year at a time. Bringing back these temporary tax giveaways, particularly on a retroactive basis after most Americans have already filed their taxes, is bad tax, fiscal, and economic policy.

Both parties agreed to end these provisions under the bipartisan PATH Act of 2015, which made a number of temporary tax provisions permanent and was supposed to put “an end to the repeated tax extenders exercise,” according to then Chairman Hatch (R-UT).

Since that time, both Democrats and Republicans have called for reducing the number of corporate tax breaks and other carve-outs in the tax code, not expanding them. A good first step would be to not bring back those few tax breaks which are already expired.

While our groups differ on what future tax policy should look like, we all agree that it is time to end the practice of passing and extending costly temporary tax provisions.

As many of us wrote last year, the American public deserves fair and stable tax, fiscal, and economic policy. Tax extenders don’t pass muster.

Thank you for your consideration of this matter.