Waypoints: Ideas and Insights to Navigate Enterprise Complexity

On December 22, 2017, President Trump signed sweeping tax reforms into law. As a result of the new and modified federal provisions, state conformity has become a popular topic of conversation among tax practitioners. Many states will have to make difficult decisions, and several have already started the process.

The House Ways and Means Committee just released the details of their tax reform bill and will start hearings next week. The Senate Finance Committee will roll out their companion legislation in the next couple weeks.

Many of the provisions are similar to those of the joint framework released in late September. However, now we have more specifics, albeit with many gaps still remaining.

Last week, President Trump released an outline of his tax plan. Many of you have probably seen or heard a few different snippets from it. While it was written very broadly, it is instructive on the administration’s thinking. It follows the House Republican “Better Way” plan in some respects but also has some major differences. 

To close out our series, Top Middle Market CFO Challenges for 2017, we see a key concern for CFOs this year is managing financial strategies in light of the potential changes in tax laws. There will certainly be new changes to tax regulations in the coming years. This is welcome news to the business leaders surveyed by CNBC. Of this group, 73.9 percent of U.S.-based CFOs agree that Trump's principal focus should be corporate tax reform. In response, the new Congress and President have made tax reform a key element of their policy agenda. How these changes impact your business and how you capitalize on them will help drive your success in coming years.

After one of the most memorable and acrimonious presidential campaigns in American history, Donald Trump stunned observers by defeating Hillary Clinton to be elected the 45^th President of the United States. Additionally, the Republican Party maintained control of both the House and the Senate.

This combination will give Mr. Trump and a Republican Congress a unique opportunity to shape many areas of policy, such as health care, regulatory reform, defense spending, immigration and more. However, near the top of that list will almost certainly be taxes. 

In the waning days of 2015, Santa stopped by the U.S. Capitol, loaded his sleigh with goodies and delivered them to taxpayers from coast-to-coast.

In my July blog, I wrote about the likelihood of meaningful tax reform, possibly in 2017. The premise was that such an undertaking is long overdue, and the context was that political reality still will make it exceedingly difficult to accomplish.

It has been 29 years since the last major rewrite of the Internal Revenue Code.  That effort in 1986 was preceded by one in 1954, a 32-year interval.  If we are to see another one, it could happen in 2017 or 2018, interestingly also nearly an identical interval.