Tax on Capitol Hill.

Following is a status report of other tax legislation important to CPAs.

Corporate tax shelters. On November 9, 1999, the Senate narrowly defeated an amendment that would have limited corporate tax shelters. Congress plans to revisit corporate tax shelters in 2000.

Workplace retirement planning. A provision that would allow employers to offer retirement-planning assistance to employees as a de minimis fringe benefit without the cost of those services being taxable to the employee was included in the GOP's vetoed tax cut package (FLR. 2488) and is among the tax provisions attached to both the House and Senate minimum wage bills.

GST tax. A provision in the House (not the Senate) minimum wage bill would give the IRS authority to grant relief to taxpayers for late allocations for the generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax exemption and rules would be modified to substantially alleviate its complexity.

Marriage penalty. When President Clinton vetoed H.R. 2488, he defeated a provision to alleviate the marriage penalty. Support remains strong in Congress to ease the marriage penalty, and it...