Obama adviser: Disagreement over top individual tax rate holding up reform

By Joseph Lawler, Joseph Lawler

Published December 20, 2015

Disagreements over the top tax rate on individuals has doomed the push for business tax reform, an economic adviser to President Obama said Tuesday.

"The big hang-up was the question of whether the individual rate needed to be cut in conjunction" with cutting business tax rates, Jason Furman said of the push for business tax reform over the past year.

The White House's disagreement with Republicans over the top tax rate on individual incomes, Furman implied, was likely to stall business tax reform during the last year of Obama's tenure.

Those comments will dampen the expectations that the election of Paul Ryan, formerly the head of the House tax-writing committee, to House speaker could rekindle talks on business tax reform that died out earlier this year.