Walter B. Jones: “A bill that I introduced, H.R. 693, the Military Death Gratuity Improvement Act, I want to thank the chairman and the…”

“A bill that I introduced, H.R. 693, the Military Death Gratuity Improvement Act, I want to thank the chairman and the ranking member for including that bill, or the language from that bill, into this major bill that I think is of great benefit to our men and women in uniform. I would like to give very briefly the history of this provision because the death gratuity was reaffirmed as a tax free benefit when the Congress amended the Tax Code in 1986; and about a year ago I happened to be driving back to the Congress, and I was listening to a talk show and they were talking about how the fact that our men and women in uniform who received the death gratuity, should they die while serving this Nation, that the families are taxed; and to the chairman and ranking member, this just really bothered my heart, to be honest about it. So I called my staff and I asked John Weaver if he would look into this, and I thought there must have been some mistake along the way. And actually there was and when the mistake took place was in 1991 when the Congress actually increased the death gratuity from $3,000 to $6,000; and what happened was the Committee on Armed Services did not send the bill to the Committee on Ways and Means, so therefore there was a tax on the second $3,000.”