Tax Reform

Floor Speech

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Mr. RISCH. Mr. President, as you may know, I strongly supported the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that passed the Senate and was signed into law last year. Over the 6 months since its passage, the law's positive impact on our country's economy has become more apparent. Companies, both large and small, have directly experienced the benefits of the law and as a result are distributing bonuses, raising wages, and making new investments in their businesses. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, I enthusiastically supported the tax law because I believed it would reduce the tax rate for small businesses, encourage investment in small businesses, and increase the overall health of our economy. Over the last few months, I have been making this series of speeches to illustrate the benefits this law provides for small businesses.

While much attention has been given in the past 6 months to the ways in which the law is leading to a positive business outlook and is lowering tax rates for individuals and corporations, the benefits that small businesses receive are not always noticed. Today I wish to draw attention to how tax reform is benefitting Li-Lac Chocolates, a small business in Brooklyn, NY. Li-Lac Chocolates makes a variety of chocolate treats the old-fashioned way. Li-Lac was founded by George Demetrious in 1923, with a single location in Manhattan's Greenwich Village neighborhood, and today the company has four retail locations across New York City and a 9,000-square-foot plant in Brooklyn. After many years of steady success in Greenwich Village, Anthony Cirone and his partners purchased the company in 2011 with plans to expand the company's sales and make the brand better known. To ensure that the taste and craftsmanship the company was known for was not lost, Cirone enlisted the expertise of master chocolatier Anwar Khoder, who has worked at Li-Lac since the late 1980s and is now a part owner. Though the new owners have made changes to the packaging design and have focused on increasing online sales, Khoder still follows Demetrious's original recipes and even uses manufacturing equipment from the company's earliest days.

Because of last year's tax law, this small chocolate manufacturing business has been able to immediately deduct improvements made to new storefronts. This enables the company to increase its cash flow, hire more workers, and open new locations at a more rapid pace. Before the implementation of the new tax law small businesses had to deal with a complex expensing formula that took many years to make use of and made improvements much less attractive to small business owners. The immediate deduction of property improvements for small businesses is one of the reasons that I supported the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Overall, the new tax law has been good for small businesses, and it has pushed many small businesses to increase their capital investments, hire additional workers, increase wages, and will lower small businesses' annual tax payments. I am pleased that small businesses like Li-Lac Chocolates will be able to reduce their tax burden by making use of this modified provision and look forward to watching the company's continued success.

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