The recently concluded tax reform conference report draft includes a one-percentage-point increase in the corporate tax rate above what both the House and the Senate passed, with some of the revenue savings being used to keep a portion of the deduction for state and local taxes as well as forego delaying its implementation until 2019, as the previous bills proposed. There remains a chance the rate may tick up yet again before negotiations are concluded, especially if other targeted tax breaks get some traction in the Congress over the next few days.
However, even this small diminution in the rate reduction is a mistake: while a one point increase may seem to be a trifle, each uptick in the corporate tax rate represents a large opportunity cost that Congress won’t be able to easily rectify in the future.