White House issues veto threats on tax extenders legislation

The White House on Tuesday night issued two veto threats on tax extenders bills set for consideration later this week in the House.

The Obama administration said it would veto a package that would extend tax credits for charitable giving — set for a Thursday vote — and another package for small businesses, which is slated for a Friday vote.

{mosads}While the administration said it supports enhancing and simplifying charitable-giving incentives it “strongly opposes House passage of H.R. 644, which would permanently extend three provisions that offer enhanced tax breaks for certain donations and add another similar provision without offsetting the cost.”

On the second bill, H.R. 636, the administration said it strongly opposes permanently extending and expanding the current expensing provisions for small businesses, as well as two other provisions that offer tax breaks for S-corporations, without offsetting the cost, which would add $79 billion to the deficit over the next decade.

The president’s budget would allow small businesses to immediately write off up to $1 million in investments, while also proposing other measures to simplify and cut taxes for those smaller firms.

“House Republicans are making clear their priorities by rushing to make these tax cuts permanent without offsets when key tax credit improvements benefiting 16 million working families with children are scheduled to expire,” the White House said in each Statement of Administration Policy.

“They are also seeking to impose a double standard by adding to the deficit to continue and create tax breaks that primarily benefit higher-income individuals, after insisting on offsetting the cost of measures that help middle-class and working Americans, such as the extension of emergency unemployment benefits,” the White House said.

The SAP said that if other traditional tax extenders were made permanent without offsets $500 billion or more would be added to deficits over the next 10 years.