Dear Friends,

From our family to yours, Martha, Liza, Payne, and I wish you a Merry Christmas!

For many of us, Christmas is a celebration of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, who came to redeem us. We honor God’s gift to us by giving to others, lending a hand to our neighbors, and spending time with our family and friends. I wanted to share this Christmas message with you and your family.

Click here to view message.

Congress achieved a major victory this past week by passing tax reform legislation to help hardworking Arkansas families keep more of their hard-earned dollars, to bring jobs back home, and to create new jobs. Reforming our broken tax code is about providing better opportunities for our children and grandchildren to succeed and live out their dreams. The president signed this bill into law on Friday, December 22, 2017.

The bill lowers individual taxes, meaning that hardworking Arkansans can keep more of what they have earned. For the majority of the over 50,000 families in Central Arkansas who claim the child tax credit, they will see this claim go from $1,000 to $2,000 per child.

Also, it doubles the standard deduction, eliminating the requirement for some to itemize their taxes and protecting more of what Arkansans earn each year. Right now, almost seven out of ten households in our central Arkansas area take the standard deduction. Even more Arkansas families will now be helped with a simpler tax filing system.

For the job creators in the Second District, this bill lowers the corporate rate to 21 percent. This significant reduction from today’s marginal rate of 35 percent will help Central Arkansas’s job creators grow and expand their businesses. And, small businesses that are organized as LLC's or other "pass through" companies also receive new investment incentives and lower rates.

Families deserve a simple and fair tax system – one that promotes new and better paying jobs. With this bill, the Congress delivered on our promise to Arkansans and Americans a tax code that provides the opportunity and relief they deserve. Together, with the significant regulatory reforms accomplished in 2017, the tax reforms will help spur investment in 2018.

Happy Christmas Eve, and may you and your family have a Merry Christmas!

Sincerely,

Representative French Hill

Week in Review

Thank you to everyone who joined me this week for my Facebook LIVE to discuss tax reform, the reauthorization of the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and more. I appreciated the thoughtful questions, and I enjoyed getting to talk about the issues that are most important to you and your families. If you have a question you would like to ask me, please email me by clicking here or call my office at (501) 324-5941.

Taking it back to Christmas in 1960, this is me (left) with my late mother (right) and her friend friend, Diane Carroll (center), along with her two daughters and my friends, Becky (left) and Susan (right).

On One America News Network, I talked to Emerald Robinson about the tradition I revived called the “Golden Fleece Award” to bring attention to wasteful government spending. I recently gave the award to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) for wasting over $10 million on an idle data warehouse - not how taxpayer dollars should be spent. Click here to watch the interview.