Bilirakis Meets with Manufacturers throughout Tampa Bay

This week, Congressman Gus Bilirakis met with a group of local manufacturers to discuss supply chain problems they've encountered, raging inflation, and their concerns about the new law which is expected to raise taxes on small businesses. Democrats used reconciliation, a special legislative process, to jam the package through on a purely partisan basis. The bill proposed nearly $570 billion in new taxes, while increasing spending and tax subsidies by roughly $580 billion over the next decade.

"Tax increases are a bad idea at any time," said Congressman Bilirakis. "They make the United States a less competitive place to do business. However, they are an especially terrible idea during a recession. This new law will hit the manufacturing industry particularly hard. We should be encouraging domestic manufacturing. Not only is the sector a tremendous economic multiplier, but making more products in the USA will help with supply chain issues and end our reliance on foreign countries, like China. This new law is the wrong approach for growing our economy. We can't tax or spend our way out of this crisis."

The Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) notes that the Democrats' new tax and spending spree will increase taxes on families with incomes below $200 thousand by $16.7 billion annually. Additionally, these taxes combined with reckless spending will likely worse inflation and cause the cost of gas, food, and supplies to continue surging. The minimum book tax, included in this bill, is particularly egregious. It will discourage investment in key sectors of the economy, including manufacturing. According to data from the JCT, the manufacturing sector leads all other sectors in the economy when it comes to the use of bonus depreciation. Bonus depreciation allows companies to quickly and affordably invest in equipment and new machinery, leading to higher productivity and more jobs. Under this new book tax provision, the deduction would not be able to be immediately taken as bonus depreciation, but rather it would have to be taken over a longer period of time. This change is expected to lead to fewer new hires and lower productivity.