From spaceports to venture capitalists, tailored tax breaks add billions to megabill
There's a $17 billion expansion of a little-known provision that enables venture capitalists to make a fortune tax-free.
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) won a carve out for the oil and gas industry from a minimum tax on big corporations that was created during the Biden administration.
There's a $2 billion break important to the rum industry and, tangentially, Louisiana, said Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a tax writer.
'We have the highest per capita intake of alcohol in the nation,' he said.
The targeted tax breaks have been overshadowed by the main purpose of the legislation: preventing a whole slate of tax cuts from expiring at the end of this year, and enacting a handful of breaks for things like tips and overtime pay that President Donald Trump had promised.
But they nevertheless got the same fast-track-into-law treatment, despite some seeming to come out of nowhere with little public vetting.
Some House Republicans grumbled about the provisions — 'loaded with pork to buy key Senate votes,' the chamber's hard-right Freedom Caucus said in a memo to colleagues. But House lawmakers backed down from threats to sink the plan over fiscal concerns and other complaints, and approved it Thursday on a 218-214 vote that sends it to Trump for his signature into law.
Even as Senate Republicans added their own provisions to the legislation, they deleted some earmarks that had been approved by the House.
Though some of the add-ons are small — like an increase in a special deduction for certain Alaskan whaling captains to buy weapons and maintain their boats — others have price tags that run in the billions.
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