Schaumburg, IL, April 5, 2011—The American Veterinary Medical Association is pleased that veterinary practice owners and other small businesses will not be sentenced to additional and costly information-reporting procedures that would have an adverse effect on their businesses. Tax paperwork and compliance are already major expenses for small businesses and the new reporting requirements would have substantially increased these costs.

The U.S. Senate passed H.R. 4 today in a vote of 87 to 12. The U.S. House of Representatives passed the legislations on March 3. The legislation now goes to the President's desk for signature.

"The AVMA is pleased Congress has repealed H.R. 4, a bill that would place unnecessary bookkeeping burden on our members," said Dr. Larry Kornegay, president of the AVMA. "Instituting another new reporting procedure requiring filing of all business-to-business transactions would only increase costs faced by our members. This legislation would have buried our veterinarians in undue paperwork rather than allowing them to provide medical care to their patients."

H.R. 4, the Comprehensive 1099 Taxpayer Protection and Repayment of Exchange Subsidy Overpayments Act of 2011, is aimed at repealing the expansion of information reporting requirements for business-to-business payments of $600 or more in a calendar year. For many businesses, this could amount to hundreds of new reportable transactions, which involves sending a 1099 to both the Internal Revenue Service and the reportable business.

For more information about this legislation, please visit www.avma.org.

The AVMA, founded in 1863, is one of the oldest and largest veterinary medical organizations in the world. More than 81,500 member veterinarians worldwide are engaged in a wide variety of professional activities.

Source: AVMA