GOP tax negotiators in the House and Senate are gearing up to release their conference report Friday, bringing Republicans a step closer to their goal of overhauling the tax code before the end of the year.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady said the conferees will sign the report sometime between 10:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. Negotiators have been working out the differences between the House and Senate bills for days and had their first public conference meeting Wednesday afternoon.
“We are finalizing the conference committee report. Tomorrow we will sign it and then later in the day, I will present I will present that to the House at which time it will go online and the American public and will examine it closely as well,” Brady told reporters Thursday. “We are on schedule for a vote next week.”
The report is expected to include language dropping the corporate interest rate to 21 percent — 1 percent higher than conservatives had pushed for — while capping the mortgage interest deduction at $750,000.
Top Republicans said they expect the final measure to set the deduction for pass-through businesses at 20 percent and lower the top individual rate t0 37 percent.
While a number of GOP lawmakers said they project the bill will more closely resemble the Senate bill in a number of key areas — including the estate tax, out-of-pocket medical expense deductions and the repeal of the individual mandate — Brady said he’s satisfied with the number of House priorities that are expected to make it into the final text.
“Well, we’ll start with the top rate which was a key priority for SALT lawmakers going in as well as the duel deduction for property sales and the triple deduction come to think of it,” Brady continued. “Obviously the House bill accelerating the business tax rates and cuts to occur now is a major part of our house bill and then just up and down we tried to blend the two areas and we picked the best to make that work.”
GOP leadership is looking to pass the measure through both chambers early next week.