Don Nickles: “to summarize again for the benefit of my colleagues, effective July 1, if we do not change this current--I started to…”

“to summarize again for the benefit of my colleagues, effective July 1, if we do not change this current--I started to say ``law,'' but this is not a law. The IRS came up with a regulation. We passed a law. Congress passed a law that says we want to encourage electronic fund transfers of payroll taxes. A good idea. It makes sense. It will work for a lot of people. IRS, to implement this, and maybe with some direction of Congress-- Congress said put most of the taxpayers in. The IRS did so, and then they came up with a 10-percent penalty. That is a big inducement, encouragement. Congress did not put on the 10-percent penalty; the IRS did--it puts a gun to the taxpayer's head--and then said, ``You have to do this.'' Then they said, ``This is not too much of a challenge for bigger employers.'' As a matter of fact, the current requirement, the threshold is $47 million of payroll taxes. If you have payroll taxes of $47 million, that is a big operation. And they are doing that now. That actually applies to 1,500 taxpayers in the country today. The next threshold level drops from $47 million to $50,000. Now you are talking about a lot of companies. You are talking about a lot of businesses. You do not have to be very big to have payroll taxes of $50,000. You might have total payroll of a quarter of a million or $300,000. That deadline is July 1. It was to be January 1. We postponed it for 6 months.”