About

2017 – Successfully worked with Congress to make the tax reform bill as favorable as possible for privately owned business.

2016 – Successfully championed the Small Business Health Care Relief Act to allow businesses with under 50 employees to once again reimburse employees for their premiums for individual coverage on a pre-tax basis without facing crippling penalties.

2015 – Successfully worked with Congress to extend or make permanent key small business tax provisions.

2014 – Worked to protect the qualified retirement plan system by opposing proposals to cut back on contributions and eliminate the stretch IRA.

2013-2017 – Engaged with the House Ways and Means Committee Tax Reform Working Groups and the Senate Finance Committee to educate the Committee members and their staffs about the impact that different tax reform proposals and revenue raisers could have on small businesses.

2012 – Successfully worked with Congress to enact permanent favorable estate tax and AMT provisions, and to gain extensions of higher expensing and depreciation for small businesses.

2011 – Educated members of Congress and their staff members about importance of the qualified retirement plan system for those employed by small businesses and critical need for certainty with respect to tax laws affecting small businesses.

2010 – Successfully worked with Congress to get SIMPLE cafeteria plan enacted.
Successfully worked with House and Senate for legislation to improve unfair “listed transaction” income tax penalties.

2009 – Worked to provide estate tax certainty for small business owners, increasing the estate tax exemption to $3.5 million, and reuniting the gift and estate tax systems to permit larger tax-free gifts

–Educated members of Congress as to problems facing small business in the health care system and how to correct those problems, attempted to show how health care reform was going in the wrong direction

–Actively worked with House and Senate for legislation to improve unfair “listed transaction” income tax penalties Worked with IRS to stop requiring frequent retirement plans amendments to save money and ease administration

2008 – Worked to fix AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax)

–Worked to remove small business from the reach of the complicated and onerous Internal Revenue Code Section 409A rules

2007 – Opposed changes to the tax code that would adversely affect small businesses, such as the national sales tax proposals

2006 – Successfully worked with members of Congress to make the favorable EGTRRA pension provisions permanent and succeeded in changing the law so that any beneficiary (not just a spouse) is able to roll over inherited retirement benefits to IRAs

2005 – Worked with key members of Congress to maintain the step up in basis on death so that small business owners do not end up hurt by estate tax reform or repeal

2004 – Worked to bring Cafeteria Plans to small business by allowing small business owners to participate in the plan, reform unfair discrimination rules, allow Cafeteria Plans to provide long-term care insurance and to throw out the unpopular and unfair “use it or lose it” rules

2002 – Worked with IRS/ Treasury to assist small businesses in formulating pension and tax rules, including extending the deadline for every retirement plan in the country to be restated for the group of laws known collectively as “GUST”. Worked with key members of Congress to draft Cafeteria Plan legislation which will allow more small businesses to sponsor Cafeteria Plans

2001 – Successfully worked with members of Congress to enact “EGTRRA”, the tax law to ease the estate tax burden on small businesses, improve retirement plans and increase IRA and retirement plan limits

2000 – Successfully worked with IRS/Treasury to save the popular “cross-tested” (“new-comparability”) retirement plans

1999 – Facilitated 401(k) “safe harbors” to make 401(k) plans far more useful and simpler for privately owned businesses

1997 – Leading proponent for the successful repeal of the 15% excise tax on large retirement plan distributions and the substantial increase in the estate tax dollar exemptions beginning in 1998 from $600,000 to $1,000,000

1996 – Major architect of pension reform as well as legislation to reform estate taxes

1995 – Derailed Big Government Health Care Proposal

1994 – Defeated proposed repeal of cross tested and age-weighted retirement plans

1993 – Successfully opposed proposal taxing capital gains at death

1992 – Defeated attempt to reduce the federal estate exclusion from $600,000 to $200,000

1990 – Won the repeal of Section 2036(c), which prohibited estate freezes

1989 – Repealed the onerous Section 89 fringe benefit tax rules

1986 – Successfully opposed negative changes for professional corporations and additional proposed burdens on small business retirement plans

1981 – Helped create the $2,000 IRA