Baseball_zIf you’ve been anywhere around youth sports, you have undoubtedly heard this coaching adage many times: “Keep your eye on the ball.” Other oft heard catch phrases include, “concentrate,” “focus,” and “mind the bottom line.” For agents, keeping your “eye on the ball” is practiced every day as agents “concentrate” and “focus” on the needs of the client while paying attention to their own “bottom line.”
Keeping your eye on the ball is also useful advice when contemplating what lies ahead in congressional budget battles. Having staved for now the consequences of falling off the fiscal cliff, Congress and the president have set in motion at least three more “cliff” scenarios.
First, the federal government will reach its current debt limit ceiling around the end of February. Second, per the deal passed by Congress on January 1, “sequestration” will come cracking back on March 1. And, third, per an agreement reached last fall, the funding for the federal government runs out March 27. Then there is tax reform.
Each of these events could easily produce the same kind of media tumult that was exhibited in the run up to the fiscal cliff. Regarding tax reform, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee has promised that his committee will start working soon on tax options that can meet the possible need for new revenue without raising tax rates.
What this means is there will likely be many legislative occasions when the current tax treatment applied to permanent life insurance and annuities could be questioned by lawmakers, some of whom believe Congress is running out of options for generating new revenue.
So this year, like every year since the favorable tax treatment for life insurance was created in 1913, NAIFA will keep its eye on this legislative ball. In turn, NAIFA will keep NAIFA members focused as issues develop so that members, too, can keep their eye on the ball. Then, as a team, NAIFA can successfully make the case that the favorable tax treatment afforded permanent life insurance and annuities should be preserved—to the benefit of 75 million American families.