Rosa supports a tax code that bolsters middle class families while asking the wealthiest Americans to pay their share. Rosa also believes in a tax code that lays the foundation for small businesses to succeed while providing incentives for corporations to invest in the United States rather than overseas.
Individual Tax Code
Rosa supports tax cuts for middle class families on income up to $250,000, while allowing the tax rates for the wealthiest 2% of Americans, to return to the Clinton-era rates. Ending tax cuts for the richest 2% would reduce the deficit by $930 billion over 10 years.
Rosa also supported an extension of the payroll tax cut in 2012 to ensure that 160 million American workers, including 2 million people in Connecticut, did not see an average $1,500 tax increase. She also supports legislation, the “Buffett Rule”, ensuring the highest-earning Americans with an annual income of over $1 million do not pay a lower tax rate than everyone else.
Rosa believes in a progressive tax code that supports working low income and middle class families. Throughout her career, Rosa has fought to expand the Child Tax Credit (CTC) to provide greater tax relief to working families. In 2009, Rosa fought to decrease the eligibility threshold for the CTC from $12,550 to $3,000 providing an increased credit of up to $1,432.50 to the families of 15.9 million children, including 5.5 million newly eligible children. In Connecticut, 116,000 children are benefiting from the expanded credit.
Small Business Tax Cuts
Rosa supports maintaining and expanding tax cuts for our small businesses. She supports legislation to help small businesses quickly recover the cost of capital expenses by writing off up to $250,000 for purchases of new equipment of up to $800,000. Rosa also supported legislation that eliminated the capital gains tax for small businesses and increased the amount of start-up expenditures entrepreneurs can deduct from their taxes from $5,000 to $10,000.
Rosa also introduced the bipartisan Manufacturing Reinvestment Account Act, which would allow manufacturing firms to establish a manufacturing reinvestment account (MRA), similar to an individual retirement account (IRA), in a community bank and to make annual pre-tax contributions of up to $500,000 that may be held in the MRA for up to 7 years. Amounts distributed from the MRA are effectively taxed at a low 15 percent rate and must be used to purchase equipment and facilities or for job training.
If a small manufacturing business invested $500,000 a year for 7 years in an MRA bearing a 5 percent interest rate, it would have an estimated after-tax balance of approximately $3.6 million to invest in equipment, facilities, and job training at the end of the investment period. That amount would represent approximately $1 million more than had the same amount initially been invested in a taxable account.
Corporate Tax Code
Rosa believes that incentives and loopholes in the tax code that encourage multinational corporations to ships jobs overseas and pursue strategies to avoid U.S. taxes hamper U.S. job creation and economic growth. She believes that corporate tax reform should level the playing field for all our businesses and be implemented in such a way so that U.S. multinational corporations that have outsourced jobs and investment overseas are incentivized to invest in American workers to create good, well-paying middle class jobs at home.
Rosa introduced the Rebuild America Act, which would eliminate tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. She is also a co-sponsor of the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, which would curb abuses of the international tax laws that cost hardworking middle class families and small businesses who play by the rules nearly $100 billion a year. Rosa also successfully fought for legislation to bar corporations that incorporate in overseas tax havens from receiving Federal Government contracts.
