RILA Letter Decries Corporate Tax ‘Sacred Cows’

The Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) has sent a letter urging the House Ways and Means Committee to consider all corporate tax preferences to lower tax rates substantially, ease burdens on consumers and enable businesses to create jobs -- that is, to leave no "sacred cows" alone.

“Consistent with the tax reform vision put forth by Chairman [Dave] Camp [R-Mich.], RILA believes that all corporate tax preferences need to be put on the table in order to give the committee as much latitude as possible to reduce the corporate rate in a revenue-neutral fashion,” noted Bill Hughes, SVP of government affairs of the Arlington, Va.-based trade group, in the letter to the Ways and Means Working Group on Income and Tax Distribution. “RILA also strongly supports the chairman’s goal of reducing the corporate tax rate to 25 percent.”

The letter referenced a RILA-commissioned PricewaterhouseCoopers study from November 2012, which found the retail industry to be the second largest private-sector employer in the United States, and also that the retail sector incurs a domestic effective tax rate of 36.4 percent -- the fourth highest among the18 major industries, and more than 10 percentage points higher than the average for all other industries. Because of the retail industry’s huge complement of employees, comprehensive tax reform could spur job growth in the retail sector and industries supported by retail, according to RILA.

Comprehensive tax reform that eliminates preferences, considerably lowers rates and streamlines the the tax code will leave consumers more money, enable small-business growth and let U.S. retailers compete globally, invest, expand their businesses and create new jobs, RILA maintains.

“From our perspective, the ideal tax reform will provide for a substantial reduction in the tax rate for corporations and a substantial reduction in the tax rate for individuals and pass-through entities,” Hughes wrote in the letter.