If a tax professional is concerned about pending legislation or wants action on a specific issue, he or she should absolutely take the time to comment to the relevant committees. This was the message offered up September 27, 2024, during the American Bar Association-sponsored 2024 Virtual Tax Forum.
When it comes to commenting on pending legislation, try to get before one of the key legislative committees. The primary committees are the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, although a few others can move tax legislation through the process. As a witness, your opinions will matter.
Caroline Bruckner, senior professorial lecturer at American University, noted that according to the Congressional Stakeholder Survey (administered in 2023 with 83 respondents from current and former Congressional staffers, witnesses and lobbyists), “72 percent of the congressional stakeholders we surveyed agreed that witnesses have impact, and these were people who were mostly involved with the selection of witnesses.”
Bruckner added that the 85 percent of those at the staff director or chief of staff level replied that witnesses have impact.
And even if you aren’t speaking before a committee as a witness, stakeholders should be thinking about submitting comments for the record.
Those comments are “a thoughtful way to try to get something both not just in the record, but in front of staff and members so they can see it,” Jonathan Goldman, Senate Finance Committee senior tax counsel, said.
Goldman encouraged stakeholders to not limit their engagement efforts to just a single comment letter targeting one person or committee. For example, he noted that to reach more people with your opinions on a subject, you should send a comment letter to the clerk, who will make sure the letter gets included in a hearing record. Plus, send it to the staff member who ran the hearing and state in the letter that you want to see the table for the record on this topic.
“It shows their engagement and tracking of that issue and also gets it in from to the right staff themselves for him or her to see it,” Goldman said. “And then you probably want to follow that up with a meeting at the staff level to talk about the issues you want to raise.”
Goldman noted that if it is an important issue, you can show up at member open house events and engage in other forms of outreach. When combined, these tactics allow your issues to be raised with multiple people who are part of the legislative process.
