The latest tax reform business barometer, released Tuesday by the Tax Council and EY's quantitative economics and statistics practice, finds that 61% of U.S. business tax professionals expect tax reform to happen in 2018 or earlier.
Thirty-one percent think it is most likely to occur in 2017.
Some 45% of tax executives and practitioners surveyed said reform would be comprehensive, 23% thought it would encompass all businesses, including both C corporations and pass-through businesses, and 17% said it would affect only C corporations.
Thirteen percent of respondents expected tax reform to be international only. With regard to interest in international-only reform, 21% said its enactment will increase the likelihood of enactment of a more comprehensive tax reform at a later date, while 51% believed it would hinder comprehensive reform.
Asked how likely it was that specific actions toward tax reform would take place in the House of Representatives, half of respondents said there was at least a 50% probability that the Ways and Means Committee chairman, Kevin Brady (R-Texas), would release a specific tax reform plan by the end of 2016.
Moreover, half of those surveyed thought it was at most 20% likely that the committee would mark up and 10% likely that it would report out of committee tax reform legislation this year. (Such legislation would then advance to a House vote.)
Half of respondents thought the likelihood that the House would pass tax reform legislation this year was disappearingly small.
