Bad News For Wall Street: No Tax Reform Until Fiscal 2018, McConnell Warns

As explained, most recently two days ago, the key reason Wall Street is concerned about the complications involving Obamacare’s “repeal and replace”, which now appears will be stuck in Congress for a long time following vocal opposition from various conservative groups and outside lobby interests, is that it will delay tax reform.

As Goldman laid it out over the weekend, “if Republican leaders cannot send the President an ACA bill by April or May, they will face two politically unpalatable options. First, they could continue to press for a solution, delaying consideration of tax reform for an indefinite period. This delay would occur because both proposals are expected to be considered under the “budget reconciliation” process. However, since only one tax bill and one spending bill can be considered under that process in each budget cycle—and ACA repeal legislation is expected to have tax and spending provisions—Republican leaders plan to consider the ACA bill in the FY2017 budget cycle, and to begin the FY2018 budget cycle, including instructions to pass tax reform, once the ACA bill has passed.”

The other option Goldman put forward would be to postpone ACA legislation and move to tax reform, essentially reneging on a campaign commitment.

That however is not going to happen. Instead, in some very bad news for Wall Street, earlier today Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell confirmed the worst case outcome, when he poured cold water on the Trump administration’s goal of completing tax reform by the August recess.  “I think finishing on tax reform will take longer,” McConnell said during a Playbook Live interview.

This automatically means that tax reform will be part of the 2018 Fiscal Year, and will not be implemented in the current budget year ag all.

Previously, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had raised Wall Street’s hopes when he said in February that the administration wants to wrap up a long-held GOP goal of overhauling the tax code before lawmakers leave for a month-long break.“So we are committed to pass tax reform,” he told CNBC. “We want to get this done by the August recess.”

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Author: Travis Esquivel

Travis Esquivel is an engineer, passionate soccer player and full-time dad. He enjoys writing about innovation and technology from time to time.

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