Cantor: 20% Small-Business Tax Cut Won’t Have Industry Limits

The bill would cut taxes for companies with fewer than 500 workers and would cap the deduction at 50 percent of wages paid to employees, Laena Fallon, a spokeswoman for Cantor, confirmed.

Cantor, a Virginia Republican, plans to release details of the bill later today. The bill will apply only in 2012, Fallon said. Roll Call, a newspaper on Capitol Hill, first reported some of the details.

Cantor said last month that Republican leaders plan to bring the measure to the House floor before the April 17 tax- filing deadline.

Cantor and other House Republican leaders proposed a similar small-business tax deduction in 2009 and 2010. The measure didn’t advance in the House, controlled at the time by Democrats.

The earlier proposals wouldn’t have allowed the deduction for income from banking, insurance, financing or investing. They also excluded golf courses, massage parlors, gambling operations, farms, hotels, restaurants, engineering firms, accounting firms and producers of pornography.

The deduction proposal was part of Republicans’ 2009 alternative to the Democrats’ economic stimulus plan, and in 2010 it became part of House Republicans’ campaign agenda.

According to 2008 figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, of the 5.9 million companies that weren’t sole proprietorships, 18,469, or 0.3 percent, had 500 or more workers. Those larger companies employed 50.6 percent of the U.S. work force.