WASHINGTON — Dozens of tax breaks that lapsed Dec. 31 would be revived in a plan to be presented soon by the new chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
The committee probably will hold a vote during the week of March 31, said a Democratic aide to the panel.
The package includes multi-billion-dollar provisions such as the research and development credit and a break that lets companies including Citigroup and General Electric defer U.S. taxes on some of their foreign income. Also on the list are benefits for horse breeders and mass-transit commuters.
Other expired breaks include the production tax credit for wind energy and a credit for manufacturers of energy-efficient appliances such as Whirlpool.
The tax-break vote will be the first test for Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who became the Finance Committee’s chairman last month.
The panel hasn’t decided whether to extend the breaks through the end of 2014 or 2015, said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity when discussing the committee’s yet-to-be-announced plans. Wyden’s proposal probably will exclude or refine some of the 55 expired breaks, the aide said, with a goal to produce a bipartisan bill.
No decisions have been made on the content of the measure or the timing for a committee session and vote, said Julia Lawless, a spokeswoman for Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the panel’s top Republican.
“When it comes to tax extenders, Senator Hatch believes there’s a lot of fat that needs to be cut and that Congress should not continue to deal with them in a business-as-usual manner,” Lawless said in an e-mailed statement. “A committee markup would provide an opportunity to expose these provisions to scrutiny and sunlight.”
Hatch has called for individual scrutiny of the expired measures.
“I’m going to insist that we cut back rather than just keep all of them,” he told reporters in early January. “We should do only the ones that we really should do.”
Wyden has made reviving the lapsed breaks his first goal since taking over for Max Baucus, D-Mont., now the U.S. ambassador to China.
The path forward after a committee vote or Senate passage isn’t clear.
House Republicans have said they won’t consider a short- term extension of the breaks.
