WASHINGTON, July 21, 2015 – The Senate Finance Committee advanced a two-year extension of a higher Section 179 expensing allowance and tax incentives for wind power and biofuels.
The tax provisions were renewed for 2014 just before the end of last year and have now expired. The committee voted 23-3 to approve the two-year extension bill.
The House has acted to make some of the provisions permanent, including the Section 179 allowance. “All of these tax provisions are meant to be incentives. … If they are expired, they aren’t doing much good,” said the committee chairman, Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. The committee adopted an amendment by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, that would limit the $1-a-gallon biodiesel tax credit to domestically produced fuel. Other two-year extensions in the bill include the production tax credit that subsidizes wind power as well as the $1.01-per-gallon tax subsidy for cellulosic biofuels. The higher Section 179 allowance would raise the amount a farmer or other business owner may immediately expense from $25,000 to $500,000 annually, indexed for inflation starting this year. The limit on the phase-out of the maximum deductible amount for purchases would be restored to $2 million, also indexed for inflation, up from $200,000.
