Talk Of Ryan-Obama Tax Deal Roils Republican-Business Alliance

Bloomberg, Talk of Ryan-Obama Tax Deal Roils Republican-Business Alliance:

The “job creators” are fighting back on tax policy—against their Republican allies.

Small-business groups that have been among the Republicans’ loyal backers are warning their friends in Congress against cutting a deal with President Barack Obama on lowering corporate taxes.

The prospect of a fractured business community makes it even harder to see a path to major changes to the U.S. tax code this year.

The hostility towards an effort spearheaded by top Republican leaders to reduce the corporate tax rate is particularly unusual because it comes from groups such as the National Federation of Independent Business, which tend to skew their political giving overwhelmingly toward Republican candidates and committees. Organizations now trying to stymie a potential deal between Obama and Representative Paul Ryan, a Republican who chairs the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, gave the president's party $1 for every $14 they gave Republican candidates. ...

The simmering conflict spilled into the open in a series of testy letters last month between the groups and the top Republican tax writers, followed by private meetings.

Leaders of small-business groups say they object to any deal that would help big companies by cutting the corporate tax rate without lowering the individual income tax rates that apply to millions of small businesses across the country.

That’s exactly the kind of deal that Ryan and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, have been considering. They’re looking for a long-shot bipartisan agreement on lowering the corporate tax rate, curtailing targeted breaks and revamping how the U.S. taxes multinational companies. Small businesses and others outside the corporate income tax would receive help with targeted breaks but not a rate cut.