WASHINGTON—The biggest threat to credit unions’ tax status may not be shaped on the House or Senate floors, but instead in a small meeting room with key players asking the question: “Who can we afford to upset?”
America’s Credit Unions President and CEO Jim Nussle, during Monday’s opening session at ACU’s Governmental Affairs Conference (GAC), shared that warning with attendees, urging them to work diligently this week to share their personal stories with elected officials.
“We have amazing stories to tell,” he said, adding credit unions must also pull together their data to quantify the impact CUs are having within their memberships and communities. “The Trump tax cuts are going to expire this year, and the tax code is going to be laid out before everybody to monkey around with. So, it is our job this week to make sure we continue to dig deep and tell our stories.”
Nussle reminded that Congress has options when it comes to choosing how to fund the budget bill. He said budget and spending cuts are solutions, however, calling those options limited in their impacts.
But Nussle emphasized what is more likely to happen is Congress finding new ways to apply taxes on people and businesses, including credit unions.
As CUToday.info reported, a House GOP document circulated earlier this year has the CU tax exemption on it as way to support the budget bill.
“Regardless, we need to recognize that if we're not at the table, telling our stories effectively, we may definitely be on that menu,” he said.
Nussle cautioned that if a decision to tax CUs is made this year, the decision may not “happen the way you think it's going to happen. This isn't going to be a bill that comes out of somebody's pocket that they put on the (Senate or House floor) and say let's vote on this in the light of day. I hope I’m wrong, but maybe the way it's going to happen is in a leadership meeting at 2 a.m. when they can't figure out where their votes are going to come from, or how they're going to pay for something. The real conversation may go like this: ‘Who can we afford to upset. Who hasn’t been noisy enough, and we can get away with a sneak attack (on them)?’”
Nussle said that is why credit unions, the leagues and ACU are working hard this week, so that when the group of leaders are in that small room, wondering whether or not they can afford to tax credit unions, they remember what they heard from the movement this week.