submitted by Tommy Goodwin, Exhibitions & Conferences Alliance
WASHINGTON, DC—With tax reform likely to be the top policy issue in Washington, DC next year, the Exhibitions & Conferences Alliance (ECA) has released its 2025 tax reform priorities for the business and professional events industry.
“From driving growth and investment to helping us create new jobs, the tax code has an outsized impact on our industry in the United States,” said Hervé Sedky, Emerald Holding Inc. President, Chief Executive Officer, and Chair of the ECA board of directors. “The 2025 tax reform debate is an important opportunity for policymakers to accelerate the U.S. industry’s competitiveness globally and ensure that we can continue to serve as a growth engine for small businesses and entrepreneurs from coast to coast.”
In 2025, the business and professional events industry will employ more than 2.6 million Americans and drive more than $426 billion in spending nationwide. The industry also pays $51 billion in federal taxes and $79 billion in state and local taxes in communities across the United States.
ECA encourages Congress to take up and pass federal tax legislation in 2025 that is pro-growth, pro-investment, pro-impact, and pro-workforce development to ensure that our industry’s small businesses and entrepreneurs can continue driving economic growth, supporting job creation, empowering their small business customers, and helping to solve our most urgent societal challenges.
- Pro-growth: ECA supports a competitive business tax rate that enables the growth of the industry and ensures that we continue to provide direct and catalytic value to our customers, stakeholders, and host communities.
- Pro-investment: ECA opposes changes to the tax treatment of private equity profits and interest deductibility that would negatively impact an important source of investment in our industry’s small businesses and future growth.
- Pro-impact: ECA opposes any alteration to the tax-exempt status of nonprofit associations and their events that could disrupt the critical work of these organizations to the industries, professions, and communities they serve.
- Pro-workforce development: ECA supports transforming Section 529 college savings plans into career savings plans that help workers secure in-demand, good-paying jobs like those that the industry offers.
“At its core, the business and professional events industry is America’s small businesses supporting America’s small businesses,” said Tommy Goodwin, ECA’s Vice President. “That’s why ECA will be ‘all in’ to make sure the industry’s voice is heard on Capitol Hill and ensure that any tax policy changes help our small businesses grow and support our efforts to create new jobs.”
In the coming weeks, ECA will be establishing a tax reform steering committee comprised of industry leaders who will guide and support ECA’s 2025 tax advocacy work.
ECA’s 2025 tax reform priorities can be viewed here.
About the Exhibitions & Conferences Alliance
The Exhibitions & Conferences Alliance (ECA) is a coalition of leading professional and industry associations comprising the unified advocacy voice of the business and professional events industry. To learn more about ECA and its work to advance the interests of the industry, please visit https://www.exhibitionsconferencesalliance.org/.
