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Small Business Administration leader, in Iowa, says tax cuts will grow economy
Rod Boshart
Dec. 13, 2017 12:55 pm, Updated: Dec. 13, 2017 5:22 pm
DES MOINES - U.S. Small Business Administration Administrator Linda McMahon said Wednesday she believes federal tax cuts will grow the U.S. economy because small businesspeople she talks to say they will reinvest the money to expand their operations, hire more employees and raise wages.
'Without fail, they talk about reinvesting in their companies. That's how we grow,” said McMahon, who brought her national Ignite Tour to Iowa to meet privately with business owners and to tour two central Iowa small business to get firsthand information on the challenges they face.
During a joint news conference with Gov. Kim Reynolds, McMahon said she's hearing common themes after visiting more than two dozen U.S. states - tax and regulatory relief, workforce shortages and health insurance concerns.
'First and foremost, it is tax cuts, and they talk tax cuts more than tax reform,” she told reporters after a closed-door roundtable discussion with nine small-business owners at the Iowa Capitol building.
McMahon said the Trump administration is optimistic that a compromise tax bill will emerge soon that takes good parts from both the House and Senate version. But she added there are no 'definitive answers yet” on what the GOP's federal tax package will look like in its final form.
'I think it's going to be a really good bill - good for middle-class America, good for our small businesses and good for our economy in general, so I'm incredibly supportive,” she said.
For her part, Reynolds said she is hoping for a resolution by next week on the federal tax package so she and majority Republican legislators can move ahead with their plan to reduce and simplify Iowa's income tax system - a plan that she hopes to unveil as part of her Condition of the State address on Jan 9.
'What happens at the federal level will have a big impact on what we're able to do at the state level and so we're watching very closely. We're encouraging them to get something done in a timely manner. I'm cautiously optimistic,” the governor said.
'We've been working on this all interim. We've been looking at different modeling and we'll see what they're able to do at the federal level and then we'll plug that in,” Reynolds added.
'It's a priority of this administration. We know that that's the next step we need to take to be competitive,” she added.
'Our tax system is complicated, it's uncompetitive and we need to do what we can to simplify and lower taxes. We want to take an opportunity to modernize the tax code.”
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