Five Questions With Speaker Ryan’s Former Senior Tax Counsel

If George Callas could change one thing in the new tax law, he would alter its limit on a tax incentive for debt financing.

The 2017 tax act (Pub. L. No. 115-97) lowered the interest expense deduction under tax code Section 163(j) to 30 percent of a company’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA). Starting in 2022, that 30 percent is set to be deducted from a smaller income amount, earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT), a change that hits large, highly leveraged companies especially hard.

“I was disappointed that we weren’t able to accommodate ...