ABMA Presses Congress on Workforce, Tax, and Credit Card Issues

A record number of lumberyard executives and supporters from the East Coast urged their members of Congress on April 8 to pass legislation to improve workforce training, keep or add tax relief, promote competition on credit card processing, and repeal the $10,000 SALT cap.

The fact that the American Building Material Alliance’s (ABMA) 75 representatives put workforce development on its priority list is a reflection of ABMA’s long work on promoting their industry to young people. Current federal training requirements, such as for commercial driving licenses and OSHA crane certification, “are misaligned with industry needs and create costly, unnecessary barriers to workforce entry,” an ABMA working document said. It supports employer-led training programs, “ensuring they gain relevant, industry-specific skills without the burden of expensive third-party programs.”

ABMA also supports employer-directed skills development and expanded funding for workforce development targeting in-school populations. 

On the fiscal side, ABMA supports continuing the benefits from 2017’s Tax Cut and Jobs Act. Among those provisions are bonus depreciation and immediate expensing for capital investments; a 20% tax-deduction for smaller pass-through (chapter S) businesses. A permanent end to the Estate Tax also wins ABMA backing.

Credit Card processing fees are in the ABMA’s cross-hairs, just as they were when the National Lumber & Building Material Dealers Association visited Capitol Hill a week earlier. Lumberyards and thousands of other companies say card processing fees are too high because the banking industry’s VISA and MasterCard systems dominate processing. ABMA supports the re-introduction of legislation that would require major banks to enable credit-card transactions to be processed on at least two networks. Doing so should promote competition that will lead to reduced processing costs, advocates believe.

Members of Congress from states with high state and local taxes have been pushing to repeal the $10,000 cap on State and Local Tax (SALT) deductions ever since that cap was enacted in the 2017 tax act. “For business owners in high-tax states, this creates a form of double taxation,” an ABMA position paper for the change declares. “We pay our full share of state and local taxes, but cannot fully deduct, resulting in a higher federal tax burden. This hits small and mid-sized employers—especially S-Corps, partnerships, and sole proprietors—particularly hard.”