Policymakers Should Focus on the True Cost of an Item on Corporate Lobby’s Tax Break Wish List

Corporate lobbyists are “pleading for extension of three key tax breaks” in a year-end tax package, Bloomberg reports — a tax package that Democrats insist must include an expansion of the Child Tax Credit. The three corporate tax breaks on lobbyists’ wish list: immediate expensing of research and experimentation costs (R&E), more generous deductions for interest expenses, and full expensing of capital investment costs. Each of these corporate provisions has issues, but full expensing in particular sticks out as highly problematic because its true revenue cost is masked by timing gimmicks.