Lynn Jenkins: “I thank the gentleman for yielding. Tax reform may not be as exciting as watching Team USA win a gold medal, but for a…”

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. Tax reform may not be as exciting as watching Team USA win a gold medal, but for a CPA who specialized in tax, comprehensive tax reform is the Olympics, and we want to win a gold medal for the American taxpayers. Our Tax Code is a disaster. At around 15,000 pages, it 's too long, it's too complicated, and it's chock-full of loopholes favoring some taxpayers at the expense of others. Temporary tax provisions alone have increased from 14 in 1986 to 132 today. U.S. taxpayers and businesses spend 7.6 billion hours simply complying with the code. Tax compliance as an industry is one of the country's largest, requiring 3.8 million workers. That's just too much. We need a code that is more fair, equitable, and efficient. We need to broaden the base, lower rates, and ignore special interests who fight to block reform, reform that will save us billions of dollars and create a million jobs. Our friends across the aisle believe increasing the top rate will restore fairness. But how can further complicating the code with more exclusions for certain folks while making it more complicated for others make it more fair? We have the means and the tools to reduce the tax rates here, and we need to get busy. Overhauling the entire Tax Code is the only way to restore fairness. What we've learned from the 1986 reforms is that broadening the base, eliminating loopholes, and lowering the rates will grow the economy and raise revenues.…”