U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-09), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, today issued the following statement upon release of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) report on the Ways and Means Committee Tax Reform Working Groups.  The report includes a summary of present law and suggestions for reform submitted to the 11 Tax Reform Working Groups.

"Before we go about overhauling the tax code and upending a lot of the deductions people use, we need to understand how it works currently," said Rep. Pascrell, co-Chair of the Real Estate Working Group.  "This is why I spent the last two months alongside my Ways and Means colleagues meeting with the Joint Committee on Taxation and stakeholders gathering a wide range of information. 

"We can’t just do tax reform for tax reform’s sake. We need to look at the code line by line and see what provisions are outdated and can be eliminated, what loopholes we can close, and what provisions are still essential to our policy goals.  The number one thing we cannot do in tax reform is create more hardship for the middle and working classes."

Public comments were accepted through April 15, 2013. 

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