Attention ADP Members:
I want to bring to your immediate attention potentially threatening legislation being considered that could impact our industry. Congress is in the process of drafting a tax reform bill that may include a restriction on advertising deductibility.
Representative Dave Camp, Chairman of the U.S. House Ways & Means Committee is expected to introduce the tax reform bill soon. The restriction being discussed could take two forms:
Allowing businesses to deduct only a percentage of their advertising costs
or
Requiring businesses to amortize those costs which means postponing the deduction of the costs over several years until long after the advertising has appeared.
Either of these changes would be very damaging to our industry. These changes would result in increases to our own advertising costs and increase the cost of our services to our advertisers. In addition, this could also reduce our competitiveness against other non-traditional advertising.
Our Yellow Pages industry needs to act now to prevent any such language being included in the first draft of the tax reform bill. It is important for ALL industry constituents including Publishers, CMRs and Industry Suppliers, to contact both Chairman Dave Camp and their own representative to express their strong opposition.
For your convenience, I have attached two template letters for you to use. Any customized changes indicating your local interest would be more personal and therefore more effective. You can refer to the Association of National Advertisers' (ANA) fact sheet for some talking points to include in your letters.
One letter is for your company to send on its letterhead to Chairman Dave Camp and your company's local U.S. representative. Please consider sending a letter to each respective representative where your business is located.
The second letter is for your employees to send to his/her representative. Representatives and their contact information can be found at www.house.gov. In the upper right-hand corner of the website is a "Find Your Representative" button to locate a representative by zip code. Be sure that the employee's postal address is included in the letter for the representative to take note.
I recommend that you email or fax these letters to your representative to ensure the timely receipt of them. Regular mail to your representative is first shipped to a processing center where it is irradiated to eliminate potential biohazards, it can delay receipt of postal mail.
Also attached is a list of the House Ways & Means Committee members. I would encourage you to call and express your opposition if your local representative is on the committee.
This potential legislation would adversely affect the Yellow Pages. As an industry, it is critical that we speak out against removing or reducing the deductibility of advertising costs as a business expense. It is imperative that you act today! If you have any questions, please call me at 248.705.4770 or email at cindi.aldrich@adp.org.
Thank you for your support.
Cindi Aldrich
President and CEO
Association of Directory Publishers
