November 01,2005

Grassley Welcomes Tax Reform Panel’s Final Report

M E M O R A N D U M

To: Reporters and Editors
Re: Tax reform panel’s final report
Da: Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2005

Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Committee on Finance, with Senate jurisdiction overtaxes, today made the following comment on the final report of the President’s tax reform panel.

“There’s almost universal agreement that our tax code is too complex. The tax forminstruction book is probably the most unwelcome piece of mail many taxpayers get. The complexitymeans taxpayers can’t be confident that they’ve received all the breaks coming to them, or that theyhaven’t paid more than they owe. They need more confidence in the system, and the tax panel’sproduct should promote a lot of discussion of how to build that confidence.

“I appreciate the tax panel’s months of study and analysis. It seems the panel members wereapolitical in their work, and that’s good. Some of their recommendations are bound to be politicallyunpopular. Cutting the home mortgage interest deduction is an example. But it’s important to havea comprehensive starting point that will get everyone talking and thinking. We’ve made progresson tax simplification before. The Joint Committee on Taxation put out a comprehensive study onways to simplify in 2001, and we’ve enacted some of those recommendations. A key change isestablishing a uniform definition of a child for several tax provisions. There used to be differentdefinitions for each provision. Changes like that just make sense, and they make life easier for thetaxpayers. We need a lot more of those common-sense simplifications. I plan to have FinanceCommittee hearings on the tax reform panel’s report as soon as possible and look forward torecommendations from the Administration in the coming weeks.”