Speaker Johnson on funding talks and 2025: Politico reports Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has been in discussions with President-elect Donald Trump about funding priorities but has not shared details. Federal government expires on Dec. 20. Looking ahead to 2025, House GOP leaders outlined multiple reconciliation priorities, including tax cuts, increased energy production, enhanced border security, and downsized federal agencies.
Debate heats up over expiring pass-through business tax deduction. Small-business owners are urging Congress to act as the 20 percent business income deduction from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) nears expiration at the end of 2025. Lawmakers debated the deduction’s future during a bipartisan event hosted by The Hill and the National Federation of Independent Businesses. Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-PA) promoted his Main Street Tax Certainty Act to make the deduction permanent, emphasizing its potential to spur economic growth. Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) joined Smucker in discussing bipartisan solutions.
Trump taps Wall Street’s Lutnick for Commerce Secretary. President-elect Donald Trump has named Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, as his Secretary of Commerce nominee. Lutnick, a billionaire Wall Street executive and key adviser to Trump, has been leading the transition team. He will oversee implementation of key parts of Trump’s economic agenda, such as imposing tariffs to shield certain US industries and expanding domestic energy production.
Could there be an app for tax filing? President-elect Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency panel (DOGE), led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, is exploring a mobile app for free tax filing with the IRS. While tasked primarily with cutting government spending and reducing regulations, the panel has discussed modernizing tax filing as a way to streamline taxpayer interactions. The proposal could gain traction as part of a broader push to overhaul federal systems, but its specifics remain uncertain. Also, Republicans have pushed back against the IRS Direct File program, which allows qualifying taxpayers to submit cost-free returns directly to the agency.
Meanwhile, the IRS is devoting more resources to its AI oversight team. The IRS is ramping up its artificial intelligence (AI) oversight efforts, adding employees and refining policies within its Research, Applied Analytics, and Statistics Division, according to a Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) report. The IRS plans to establish a dedicated AI office, and TIGTA urged the IRS to accelerate these efforts, warning of risks like amplified biases and civil liberties concerns. The IRS’s AI assurance team has met 13 times this year to evaluate compliance; critics continue to call for greater transparency regarding the data fueling its algorithms.
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