Lankford, Hern highlight tax benefits in GOP’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’

Oklahoma's Republican members of Congress have used the August recess to champion the benefits of the “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

Oklahoma had two members of its delegation at the table helping write the tax portion of the bill. Sen. James Lankford and Rep. Kevin Hern both say the biggest tax benefit is one that most people won’t notice.

“The American people, Oklahomans, people in the 1st District, would have seen their taxes increase on average 22% across the board. You won’t see that now,” said Hern.

That’s because at its core, the bill was a vehicle to extend President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts.

“That’s really important for the American people to see is that sometimes the federal government needs to do no harm, and this is doing no harm,” said Hern.

Among the bill’s tax policy features for individuals, income tax rates are made permanent, with the highest rate remaining 37%. The increased standard deductions are now permanent. The much-talked-about no tax on tips and overtime is in place through the end of the term, and the increased child tax credit is made permanent.

“We extended the child tax credit during this time,” said Lankford. “We gave an extra tax benefit to companies that want to do child care on-site to be able to improve the availability of child care for businesses.”

The bill sets the qualified business income deduction permanently at 20%, reinstates and makes permanent a 100% bonus depreciation, reinstates and makes permanent expensing of domestic research and experimentation, and modifies the calculation of adjusted financial statement income for taxpayers with oil and gas operations.

Lankford says what he’s hearing from constituents is mostly positive.

“People are very pleased with the tax changes and what actually that means for their individuals, for their businesses, and what that means for nonprofits,” he said.