The Senate Finance Committee Chairman apparently remains bullish on the prospects that follow-on legislation to the original SECURE Act will be enacted this year during the lame-duck session.
Speaking to reporters Nov. 15 on a press call, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), who is Chairman of the tax-writing Senate Committee on Finance and one of the key authors of the pending retirement legislation, reportedly predicted that an agreement will be reached between the House and Senate on a final retirement package and that it would be approved as part of a year-end budget deal.
As part of that call, Sen. Wyden also confirmed that House and Senate lawmakers currently are working to reach an agreement on the differences between the pending retirement bills.
“We’re going to make it part of the package that moves before the end of the year—we’re deep in the discussions,” Wyden stated, according to a report by Politico, adding that, “All of the negotiators are committed to getting this done before we wrap up.”
The Finance Committee chairman also indicated that his committee wants to act as quickly as possible on the nomination of Danny Werfel to become Commissioner of the IRS. Although he did not give an exact timeframe on when that would happen, with the Democrats maintaining control of the Senate, the pressure to act immediately has softened somewhat. Still, given the ongoing funding and enforcement issues surrounding the IRS being raised by congressional Republicans, Werfel will likely be on the “hot seat” during his confirmation process.
Meanwhile, according to a report by Bloomberg, Sen. Wyden also outlined a number of other tax-related priorities that he sees the Committee debating, including that Democrats may seek a tax-cut deal of up to $100 billion with congressional Republicans that would address the child tax credit and the so-called tax extenders, which are various business tax breaks that are set to expire at the end of the year.
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