The Senate may have passed their version of the tax reform bill, but the fight is not over.
Because the bill differs substantially from the House version on key provisions, leaders of both chambers have assigned conferees to a House-Senate conference committee to reconcile the differences and develop a final version of the bill.
AIA is focused on impacting two specific provisions of the tax reform bill: the Historic Preservation Tax Credit (HTC) and tax rates for small businesses that operate as pass-through entities. The House legislation completely abolishes the HTC and the Senate version retains the provision, but significantly dilutes its effectiveness and usefulness. Additionally, both bills continue to exclude architecture firms organized as “pass-through” companies from benefiting from reduced tax rates.
To learn how the version passed by the Senate affects you, please read our latest Tax Reform Update for components. Additionally, you can easily see how the provisions related to our key issues differ in the House and Senate versions of the bill in our updated comparison chart. The AIA has also released a statement from 2017 President Thomas Vonier, FAIA, which is available here.
The AIA is calling on Congress to fully restore the Historic Preservation Tax Credit and ensure that architects are treated fairly by allowing small architecture firms to take advantage of the lower tax rates available to other small businesses.
The House has announced the legislators that will represent their chamber on the conference committee, and AIA members in those districts have been mobilized. The Senate has not revealed their list of conferees. When they do, you will receive a call to action if one of your Senators is on the committee. Please be alert as we will be moving quickly once that is announced – but in the meantime you can continue to engage your members of Congress through the alerts on the Advocacy Action Center.