Tax reforms badly needed

By Joe Hernandez, co-founder, Nevada Hispanic Business Group

Sunday, July 2, 2017 | 2 a.m.

We’re six months into a new presidential administration and congressional session, and Americans are still awaiting promised bipartisan legislation on comprehensive tax reform to lower rates, simplify regulations and promote growth and prosperity for the future. For individual Nevadans, and the more than 45,000 small businesses like mine who employ them, Congress needs to act soon.

In the more than 30 years since Congress last reformed our federal tax code, our corporate rate — highest in the industrialized world at a combined state and federal average of 39 percent — has managed to stifle productivity, slow economic growth and discourage job creation.

The rate itself is onerous, but the regulatory environment is just as bad; so difficult and time-consuming to navigate, compliance last year alone cost the U.S. economy $232.8 billion and over 6.1 billion hours of total labor time, according to the National Taxpayers Union. Nevada can’t afford these excessive costs. Neither can the country.

As a business owner and employer, I’ve long lived with these burdens. I can attest that the comprehensive reforms being debated in Congress — treating all industries equally, lowering the corporate and small business rates, and moving the U.S. to a territorial tax system so that companies are not faced with double taxation overseas — will allow me to invest more fully in my business, expand and hire more employees.