Why Tax Reform Won’t Be Quick

Stan Collender: “There’s just one thing you really need to know about whether tax reform will happen by the end of this year: It’s about to take a very small group of senior policymakers more than six months to agree on the broadest of principles for what a tax reform plan should do…and the broad principles will be the easy part.”

“In spite of the nuanced optimism you hear from The Gang of Six, it’s very likely to take much longer than it did for those six people — only four of which actually have votes — to agree on the generalities.”

“Every one of the 535 members of Congress has individual and corporate taxpayers in his or her district or state and the nitty gritty, deep-in-the-weeds details will be extremely important to each representative and senator. At the very least they will all want to appear to have had an impact on the final product so there will be multiple time-consuming amendments offered both in committee and on the House and Senate floors.”