We need to end permanently the tax that punishes American values of savings and investment and of building small businesses and family farms and ranches.
My constituents in Kansas know the death tax is a duplicative tax on small businesses and family farms that, in many cases, families have spent generations building.
The Death Tax destroys American jobs and cripples small businesses and family farms.
With my support, the House of Representatives recently voted to permanently repeal the death tax so that family farms and businesses can be passed down to children and grandchildren.
The American people know what's necessary to get this economy moving again. It's fiscal discipline in Washington, D.C. and across-the-board tax relief for working families, small businesses and family farms.
Then by the springtime, you'll see us moving an effort to cut taxes for working families, small businesses and family farms to reform our business taxes in this country so that American businesses can compete more effectively with businesses around the world.
And what's interesting, and I don't think a lot of Americans understand this fact, is that, one, most new jobs are created by small businesses; two, most small businesses pay tax at the individual income tax, or many small businesses pay tax there.
I really like the idea of consumption tax, and most countries have a pretty serious consumption tax. It's called a value-added tax or a goods and services tax ... It's a sales tax. It doesn't tax labor, it doesn't tax savings or investment - it taxes consumption.
We need to even out the tax code for small businesses so that we lower their tax rate to 25 percent, just as we need to lower it for all businesses.
The American economy is driven by small business. And there's nothing basically to create incentives for small businesses. We've done no tax reform. They're the highest-taxed group in the country. And corporations can go anywhere they want and do whatever they want. Small businesses have to stay.
The death tax punishes the American dream - making it virtually impossible for the average American family to build wealth across generations.
Family farms and small businesses are the backbone of our communities.
The death tax destroys family businesses and stifles investment that leads to increases in jobs and personal income. As a result, 70 percent of family-owned businesses are not passed on to the next generation and 87 percent do not make it to the third generation.
We need a tax code that promotes savings, investment, achievement, innovation, and hard work.
We also need to reduce corporate tax rates. This applies to small, medium and large businesses. At 35 percent, we have the second highest corporate rates in the world. It restricts the growth of small enterprises that need to plow capital back into their businesses and forces companies and jobs to move overseas.
There are a lot of studies about small businesses and how they make a difference in their community and create a lot of jobs and values. So we need to focus on small businesses or entrepreneurs who want to start manufacturing or making things.
The other thing that's really important in tax reform is making sure that we don't tax American businesses at much higher tax rates than our foreign competitors tax theirs. It is costing us jobs. It's one of the reasons all these American companies are moving overseas.