Taxpayers for Common Sense’s president, Ms. Ryan Alexander is testifying today against extenders at the Post Tax Reform Evaluation of Recently Expired Tax Provisions before the House Ways and Means Committee, today, Wednesday, March 14, 2018 in 1100 Longworth House Office Building. She will be on Panel 3 at 2 pm.

You can find Ms. Alexander’s full testimony here and here.

We have long spoken out against extenders at Taxpayers for Common Sense. In almost every case, extender bills are passed without debate on any of the individual provisions. They end up masking the true cost of a bill, are a boon to lobbyists, and are the opposite of tax reform. The true cost of these provisions is hidden, because extenders start out  “temporary,” but often end up permanently costing the taxpayer big. In Ms. Alexander’s words:

“The practice of tax extenders undercuts the most broadly agreed upon goals of tax policy: to provide certainty to individuals and businesses; to provide a predictable flow of revenue to the government; and to encourage future behavior. The procedural history and practice of tax extenders is equally flawed. In almost every case, the hodge-podge package of unrelated extenders are attached to a must-pass bill –without full offsets for lost revenue. The narrow provisions add complexity and result in Washington picking winner and losers. In the last decade, six out of seven extender bills have included retroactive provisions, subsidizing past — rather than future — actions. We welcome this hearing as one of the first instances of oversight on extenders and expiring provisions in the tax code, but we believe the entire process should be ended.”