22. Department of the Treasury · Notable · Needs Congress
Cap deductible untaxed employee benefits at $12,000 per employee per year
Printed page 697 22. Department of the Treasury
“To reduce this tax bias against wages (as opposed to employee benefits), the next Administration should set a meaningful cap (no higher than $12,000 per year per full-time equivalent employee—and preferably lower) on untaxed benefits that employers can claim as deductions.”
What has happened
- Not started
No cap was set on the employer deduction for untaxed employee benefits. The section 106 exclusion for employer-provided health coverage and the section 162 deduction for the employer's cost are untouched by Public Law 119-21, and the law moved the other way on the margin by enhancing the employer-provided child care credit (sec. 70401), the dependent care assistance program exclusion (sec. 70404) and the exclusion for employer payments of student loans (sec. 70412). No bill capping untaxed benefits at $12,000 per full-time equivalent employee appears in the 119th Congress corpus.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
This is one of the few asks in the chapter that the Mandate addresses to “the next Administration” but that only Congress can deliver, since the exclusion and the deduction are both statutory. Flagged requires_congress in the frontmatter, which is right.
- Action
- restrict
- Object
- employer deduction for untaxed employee benefits
- ID
- 1938