House Ways & Means Chair Dave Camp (R-MI) defended a bank tax in his sweeping tax reform proposal, describing it as one of many ideas he’s offering to begin the conversation about overhauling the U.S. tax code.
“I don’t care about how comfortable it may make people, or how uncomfortable. I’m not willing to wait. I’m willing to take on this issue [of tax reform] because I think it’s something the American people are going to demand,” the House’s top tax-writer told reporters Wednesday at a Washington breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.
The policy, which Camp stressed was in the context of lowering overall tax rates, would levy a modest excise tax on some financial firms with more than $500 billion in assets. “When you reduce their rate to 25 [percent],” he said, “unlike other industries that have to make tradeoffs to get to 25, there aren’t many. So I thought it was important that [the financial] industry also had tradeoffs.”
He also described as “common sense” unwinding the so-called carried interest loophole, which benefits private equity partners.
In response to a reporter’s question, Camp said JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon had not called him personally to complain about the policy.
“He hasn’t called me,” he said.
Camp conceded that it’s “very difficult” to predict the likelihood of tax reform, the prospects of which are widely regarded as bleak in the foreseeable future.
