Forty-seven press associations representing daily and weekly newspapers across the country have voiced opposition to an advertising tax change proposed within the Senate Finance Committee.
The move would require all advertisers to wait up to five years before they can fully deduct the cost of half of their advertising as a business expense.
To obtain your senators’ contact information to voice your position, click here.
The proposal was outlined in a paper titled “Discussion Draft on Cost Recovery and Accounting Language.”
As the press associations’ dissenting letter explains, “We believe the proposal in the discussion draft would severely undercut the economic power of advertising to generate sales and support jobs. The proposed tax on advertising would push our economy down at a time when businesses – including newspapers and other media that rely on advertising – are beginning to move forward in a positive direction.”
According to estimates by economic consulting firm IHS Global Insight, advertising currently:
• Accounts for $5.8 trillion of the $33.8 trillion in U.S. economic output
• Supports 21.1 million of the 136.2 million U.S. jobs.
“The proposed tax would have an immediate and devastating impact on newspapers and other media, where advertisers underwrite much of the cost of bringing news, information and entertainment to all Americans,” reads the letter from the press groups.
The associations remind policy makers that advertising is an ordinary and necessary cost of doing business and has been treated as a deductible expense for 100 years. The groups urged members of the Finance Committee to reconsider including the proposed tax in a tax reform package.
To obtain your senators’ contact information to voice your position, visit Senate.gov.
