Barring action by the U.S. Congress, several key provisions from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act are scheduled to expire at the end of 2025. This spring, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) and Tax Subcommittee Chairman Mike Kelly (R-PA) set up 10 teams to investigate how these possible changes in the tax code could affect different aspects of America’s economy.
Representative Ron Estes (R-KS) is leading the Innovation team, with a vitally important focus on what’s ahead. Innovation drives our nation’s economy and creates new opportunities across sectors.
America’s life insurers are among the innovators, leveraging 175 years of helping people build financial certainty for their families, while also providing valuable investment capital for businesses and communities in all 50 states. Today, 90 million American families count on life insurers to be there and help them navigate financial shocks through all stages of life. No other industry can make – or fulfill – that kind of promise with financial guarantees.
Life insurance companies invest the premiums they receive from their policyholders in stable, long-duration assets. These assets are invested conservatively to ensure life insurers can keep their long-term promises and pay benefits at some uncertain date, often decades in the future
Families use these benefits to pay the bills after the death of a loved one, to fund the transfer of a family business from one generation to the next, and more. Retirees rely on annuity benefits to provide a steady income stream that can supplement Social Security for life. Life insurers pay out $2.3 billion each year in life insurance and annuity benefits to Kansas families. That’s $6.4 million every day.
At the same time, life insurers’ investments are supporting initiatives by private industry and governments in Kansas and throughout the United States. These investments help families get their first homes, finance education, fund infrastructure and much more.
For example, life insurers have invested $81 million in bonds supporting Sedgwick County, Ks. schools and $322 million in bonds overall supporting Kansas education.
All told, life insurers are an integral part of the Kansas economy, with $50 billion of investments in commercial, residential and agricultural mortgages, stocks, bonds and more. Nationwide, life insurers invest $7.5 trillion in the U.S. economy.
ACLI and NAIFA support the important efforts by Rep. Estes and the Ways and Means Committee to listen to constituents and gather information. As Congress deliberates changes to the tax code, the life insurance industry is committed to working with policymakers to protect financial stability and ensure that all Americans can protect their family’s financial future.
NAIFA-Kansas member Steve Elliott is from Wichita, Kansas.
