WASHINGTON (2/20/14)--House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.), in a memo to Republican committee members,  said he plans to release draft reforms to the U.S. tax code the week of Feb. 24 (Bloomberg BNA, Politico Feb. 19).

The Credit Union National Association will have 4,300 credit union advocates hitting Washington, D.C., for its Governmental Affairs Conference (GAC) starting Feb. 23 and Executive Vice President John Magill said earlier this week that the timing of having thousands of credit union advocates available for Capitol Hill meetings could not be any better with the expectation of the release of Camp's discussion draft for tax reforms (News Now Feb. 19).

It was almost exactly a year ago, in fact,  that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) used the CUNA 2013 GAC as the platform to discuss reform of the country's tax code.

In response to news of the Camp memo Wednesday, CUNA President/CEO Bill Cheney said, "For the past nine months, CUNA, the state credit union leagues, and credit unions have been contacting members of Congress and urging them 'Don't Tax My Credit Union.' After more than 1.3 million contacts with lawmakers through that campaign, we're hopeful that our advocacy message got through."

Cheney added, "Regardless of what is contained for credit unions, if anything, in Chairman Camp's plan next week, we will continue to defend the credit union tax exemption--because it's all about our structure as not-for-profit, cooperative financial institutions that exist to provide service to their members."

According to Bloomberg BNA, the Camp memo said now is the time to pursue a tax overhaul in the interest of boosting the economy. 

The article noted that if Camp sticks to his earlier outlines of draft reforms, his new legislation would cut back tax credits and deductions in pursuit of a lower tax rate.