Full Business Expensing Is Vital for Post-COVID-19 Economic Recovery

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An idea gaining
bipartisan traction
in Congress would help fix the damaging taxation of new
investments set to kick in amid America’s eventual economic recovery from the COVID-19
pandemic.

Now is the time for lawmakers to make full expensing
permanent and extend similar treatment to factories and retail space.

Full expensing lets businesses deduct spending on essential investments, such as equipment and tools, in the same way they currently can deduct their spending on employee wages, advertising costs, or rent.

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Expensing fixes a costly quirk in the U.S. tax code that
makes investing in America more expensive and thus harder to create jobs,
increase productivity, and raise wages.

Under current law, short-lived assets (those with useful
lives of 20 years or less) are eligible for full expensing through 2022, and
then it phases out over the following five years. At the same time, new
spending on research and development will also lose the benefit of expensing.

As businesses lose the ability to deduct the full cost
of their expenses immediately, they will choose to invest less as the after-tax
cost of investing increases.

The threats of COVID-19 have shuttered large parts of
our economy and delayed many business plans until next year—or longer.

Large purchasing orders for new equipment and tools often
have long runways, taking months or even years to plan and execute. Following
the uncertainty of the current crisis, the end of full expensing will come in
the midst of our economic recovery. And uncertainty about the future of
expensing could further delay necessary business investments.

Businesses need tax certainty to plan their recovery. The
Accelerate Long-term Investment Growth Now (ALIGN) Act, sponsored
by Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., would do just that by making the current law on 100%
expensing permanent.

Congress has included partial bonus expensing as an
important economic-recovery allowance in the years after 2002, and during the
Great Recession beginning in 2008. Recent research
finds that bonus expensing following those downturns allowed businesses to
increase employment and earnings.

Expensing is not just a business tax cut. It is at its core
pro-worker.

By lowering the after-tax costs of new investments,
businesses can upgrade or retrofit their facilities and equipment, or more
easily move their operations back to the U.S. from abroad. As companies expand
and innovate, they create more jobs, use better technology, and increase
productivity, all of which boost
wages

In the post-coronavirus recovery, many American
businesses will need to retool their operations for an economy that could look
very different. Some firms will expand, others will need to reorganize,
entrepreneurs will start new businesses that no one has thought of yet, and
other businesses may want to bring critical capabilities back to the United
States.

For whatever reason American businesses might need to
make new purchases in the coming years, new investments should not be
threatened by temporary tax policy that could arbitrarily raise business costs.

Making expensing permanent is a simple fix to ensure a
more robust economic recovery.

Congress should also consider extending expensing beyond
short-lived assets. Residential and nonresidential property, such as new
apartment buildings or manufacturing floor space, should also be eligible for
faster write-offs.

Currently, these big-ticket items have to wait 39 years to deduct the full cost of the investment. Thirty-nine years is a long time to wait and, because of that,  structures face a significant tax disadvantage over other investments.

Making expensing permanent would extend the benefits of a proven recession-fighting policy and make it easier for American businesses to invest in the great American recovery.

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