JCT expands analysis of Obama administration proposal for permanent research credit

The staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) recently released its analysis of the revenue provisions in President Barack Obama's proposed fiscal year 2012 budget. As in previous JCT analyses of Administration budget proposals, this year's JCT pamphlet includes a lengthy analysis of the Administration's research credit proposal. The new budget reaffirms the Obama Administration's prior proposal to make the section 41 research credit permanent; the George W. Bush Administration also had called for a permanent credit. This year, the Administration also proposes to increase the rate of the alternative simplified credit (ASC) from 14 percent to 17 percent. The proposals would be effective for amounts paid or incurred after 2011. While most of the JCT document simply repeats its analysis last year of the Administration's research credit permanence proposal for fiscal year 2011, the JCT has added a discussion of two key definitional issues that affect administrability of the research credit. These issues have been the subject of important, taxpayer-favorable court decisions.