[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 157 (Monday, September 24, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Page S6273]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               TAX REFORM

  Mr. RISCH. Mr. President, as you may know, I strongly supported the 
Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that passed the Senate and was signed into law 
last year. Over the 6 months since its passage, the law's positive 
impact on our country's economy has become more apparent. Companies, 
both large and small, have directly experienced the benefits of the law 
and as a result are distributing bonuses, raising wages, and making new 
investments in their businesses. As chairman of the Senate Committee on 
Small Business and Entrepreneurship, I enthusiastically supported the 
tax law because I believed it would reduce the tax rate for small 
businesses, encourage investment in small businesses, and increase the 
overall health of our economy. Over the last few months, I have been 
making this series of speeches to illustrate the benefits this law 
provides for small businesses.
  While much attention has been given in the past 6 months to the ways 
in which the law is leading to a positive business outlook and is 
lowering tax rates for individuals and corporations, the benefits that 
small businesses receive are not always noticed. Today I wish to draw 
attention to how tax reform is benefitting Li-Lac Chocolates, a small 
business in Brooklyn, NY. Li-Lac Chocolates makes a variety of 
chocolate treats the old-fashioned way. Li-Lac was founded by George 
Demetrious in 1923, with a single location in Manhattan's Greenwich 
Village neighborhood, and today the company has four retail locations 
across New York City and a 9,000-square-foot plant in Brooklyn. After 
many years of steady success in Greenwich Village, Anthony Cirone and 
his partners purchased the company in 2011 with plans to expand the 
company's sales and make the brand better known. To ensure that the 
taste and craftsmanship the company was known for was not lost, Cirone 
enlisted the expertise of master chocolatier Anwar Khoder, who has 
worked at Li-Lac since the late 1980s and is now a part owner. Though 
the new owners have made changes to the packaging design and have 
focused on increasing online sales, Khoder still follows Demetrious's 
original recipes and even uses manufacturing equipment from the 
company's earliest days.
  Because of last year's tax law, this small chocolate manufacturing 
business has been able to immediately deduct improvements made to new 
storefronts. This enables the company to increase its cash flow, hire 
more workers, and open new locations at a more rapid pace. Before the 
implementation of the new tax law small businesses had to deal with a 
complex expensing formula that took many years to make use of and made 
improvements much less attractive to small business owners. The 
immediate deduction of property improvements for small businesses is 
one of the reasons that I supported the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Overall, 
the new tax law has been good for small businesses, and it has pushed 
many small businesses to increase their capital investments, hire 
additional workers, increase wages, and will lower small businesses' 
annual tax payments. I am pleased that small businesses like Li-Lac 
Chocolates will be able to reduce their tax burden by making use of 
this modified provision and look forward to watching the company's 
continued success.

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