The House wouldn't accept a tax bill that, like the Senate's, would eliminate deductions for all state and local taxes, the chairman of the House's tax-writing committee said.
"I'm committed to it," House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, said on "Fox News Sunday." The House bill would eliminate federal tax breaks for state and local income or sales taxes, but it would preserve a deduction for property taxes, capped at $10,000. Combined with a new family tax credit and a deduction for mortgage interest for new purchases that would be capped at $500,000 of debt, the House bill "gets the job done," Brady said.
Brady's comments come as differences between the House and Senate proposals showed the difficult road to passage of a tax bill. The Senate plan proposes to eliminate federal tax breaks for all state and local levies, including property taxes. That provision will almost certainly be resisted by Republican House members in high-tax states such as New York, New Jersey and California. That group pushed Brady to keep the property tax deduction in the House bill.
Brady's committee approved its bill last week, and it's headed for a planned vote of the full House as soon as Thursday or Friday. He said he believed the House is "on schedule."
The Senate Finance Committee is scheduled Monday to begin considering its version of the bill, which also departs from the House version by delaying a corporate tax cut until 2019. Senate Republican leaders have said they want to hold a full Senate vote before Thanksgiving.
Both bills call for cutting the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent, but the House version would begin the new rate in 2018.
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