Sean Clerget: Republican chief tax counsel, House Ways and Means Committee

Republicans delivered their major tax-and-spending cut bill this year faster than almost anyone in Washington had expected — and instrumental in that whirlwind process was House Ways and Means Committee chief tax counsel Sean Clerget.

Clerget described the work as combining technical tax knowledge with interpersonal skills, and he credited committee Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) with bringing the conference together to ensure all members had a hand in producing it.

“He wanted every single member to be involved in how we built the bill … so that they could really own the bill, but also really feel good about the process of how we got there,” he told The Hill in an interview.

A fan of John Grisham novels and captain of his college tennis team at Wabash College, Clerget didn’t start out in tax policy but came to it through litigation, investigations and oversight — specifically of the IRS.

“Oversight work at Ways and Means covers the committee’s full jurisdiction, but it also has a particular focus on the IRS,” he said of his background. “I got to do oversight of the agency but also start looking at policy when it comes to how the agency operates.”

One of the major successes of the tax cut bill, from Clerget’s perspective, is its international tax provisions, which allow the U.S. to pull out of an international tax accord at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) by striking a deal with the Group of Seven major economies.

That deal was struck in lieu of a retaliatory capital tax on foreign investors that was passed in the House version of the bill but was later removed by the Senate.

“It was effectively a retaliatory provision for [what the] OECD was trying to impose and, in our view, unfairly tax American companies,” he said. The ultimate goal was “to get to a resolution on that issue in a cooperative way around the world. I think that was a huge win.”