Stop the Rush, Reconsider R&D Tax Credit

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There’s a rush to get a tax bill passed in Washington, D.C., where President Donald Trump sits atop a Republican Party anxious for something – anything – to take home for the holidays.

Congressional GOPers are anxious

because U.S. Senators and their fellows in the House of Representatives will be the canaries in the coal mine of Washington’s prattle of the past year. The mid-term elections will crank

up not long after the last notes Auld Lang

Syne fade.

A tax cut would be an awfully nice talking point to tote around the home turf – and let’s not be surprised by politicians in a hurry to look after their own interests.

Let’s not get caught up, either, with the way Washington plays these games.

Let’s instead take a minute to consider some ideas about our market here in Los

Angeles.

It’s been said small-minded folks think about themselves, the average among us think about other people, and great minds think about ideas. That brings us to the idea of the tax credit for research and development, which looked likely, as of this writing, to be washed out in a new law.

R&D is about ideas. Many of those ideas spur all sorts of enterprises that prod demand for all kinds of labor, raw materials, component parts, ancillary products, and support services.

No state in our union has more ideas than California. And nowhere in California will you find more ideas than Los Angeles.

Ideas are the life blood of Los Angeles. And R&D is the body economic through which that blood flows.

The R&D tax credit gives companies a break based on capital dedicated to innovation. That often means hiring scientists and engineers – those heroes, sung and unsung, who serve the realm of ideas.

Take a look at what’s driving growth in Los Angeles these days. It starts with innovators in biotech and digital media, aerospace and energy, among other sectors. They spur opportunities for lawyers and accountants and landlords and suppliers and the rest of us.

Now is the time to make the case about the R&D tax credit, and how it stands to hit L.A. and California.

It’s a worthy challenge for Democrats in office and Republicans in the private sector to do what they can, regardless of political or geographic differences, to impress upon and explain to the White House and the legislative majority in Washington that it’s different here.

That’s an idea that deserves consideration in the tax code.

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