Dear Members of the United States House of Representatives:

 

While work on comprehensive, pro-growth tax reform is ongoing, Business Roundtable urges Congress to extend key expiring tax provisions so that employers can invest and hire with certainty. Specifically, Business Roundtable calls for passage of H.R. 4718 to modify and make permanent bonus depreciation, otherwise known as fifty-percent expensing, as a bridge to broader business tax reform.

 

Private-sector investment is a major contributor to job creation, wage growth, and U.S. competiveness. Fifty-percent expensing reduces the cost of capital for business investment, thereby allowing businesses to undertake a greater amount of investment. Business investment is still recovering from the very low levels it reached during the recession, and the U.S. economy continues to consistently underperform. A sustained period of higher business investment and growth is needed to restore the productive capacity of the U.S. economy and propel job creation.

 

Fifty-percent expensing and other important business tax provisions such as the research credit, the active financing rule, and the CFC look-through rule expired at the end of 2013. These provisions have consistently received bipartisan support in Congress and from the Administration. The House and the Senate should work together to swiftly extend all of these provisions retroactively.

 

Ultimately, U.S. economic growth will require a thoroughly reformed, permanent, modernized, and simplified tax code. Business Roundtable urges Congress to enact legislation to renew these major pro-growth tax extenders and then move forward with broader tax reform.

 

Sincerely,

Randall Stephenson

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

AT&T Inc