While the White House is vowing to have a tax reform package on the Senate floor byNovember, few details have emerged as to exactly what it will looklike.

What is known is that the tax-preferred treatment of contributions toqualified retirement plans is still under discussion, accordingto Marc Short, the White House Legislative Affairs Director.

Short’s comment was made Monday at a forum on tax reform hostedby Americans for Prosperity, a conservative activist group, thatincluded Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin.

Offering no specifics, Mnuchin made repeated guarantees thatreform will happen this year.

He also underscored that tax reform is a linchpin to the Trumpadministration’s pro-growth agenda. By simplifying the code,reducing corporate and business tax rates, and lowering individualrates it aims to stimulate overall economic growth and wageinflation for the middle and working classes.

While the wealthiest Americans would see their individual ratereduced, Mnuchin said they would not necessarily pay less in taxes,as reform will eliminate most of the deductions that the Secretarysaid largely benefit top earners.

“Rich people have been able to take advantage of the tax code,”said Mnuchin. “This is not about a tax cut for the rich. It’s abouttax simplification.”

Mnuchin’s message to special interests: Be prepared to not geteverything you want.

‘Political suicide’

The retirement services industry is mounting an aggressivecampaign on Capitol Hill to protect the tax-preferred treatment ofcontributions to 401(k)s and IRAs.

Plan and IRA contribution deductions will cost about $670billion in forgone revenue between 2016 and 2020, according to thenon-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation, which advises Congresswith research on the tax code.

Last week, a joint statement from the White House andCongressional leaders said reform would not include a new border adjustmenttax, a primary pay-for in the House Republican Blueprint on taxreform, released last year. That new tax on imported goods wasexpected to raise $1.2 trillion in revenue over 10 years.

It was also the largest offset to the blueprint’s goal ofslashing the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent,which the non-partisan Tax Policy Center estimates will cost $1.8trillion over 10 years.

With that major pay-for scrapped, the tax break on contributionsto qualified retirement plans may be an all the more attractivesource of revenue.

Will Hansen, senior vice president of retirement policy at theERISA Industry Committee, doesn’t think lawmakers will stoop to tapa popular individual deduction to pay for a break in the corporaterate.

“It would be political suicide to reduce the corporate tax rateand then use an individual deduction to pay for it,” said Hansen.ERIC represents the interests of large sponsors of 401(k) plans,many of which stand to benefit from a reduced corporate rate.

Can’t get there from here

Last April, Gary Cohn, director of the White House’s NationalEconomic Council, said, “retirement savings will be protected” under tax reform.

Rep. Kevin Brady, R-TX, Chair of the House Ways and MeansCommittee, has made similar pledges in the media.

But those vows were made before Marc Short’s recent commentssuggesting treatment of retirement plans was still on thetable.

They were also made before the failure of Republican’s effortsto repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

After suffering that political humiliation, a victory on taxeswill be all the more incumbent for an embattled White House andCongressional Republicans going into the 2018 mid-termelections.

The fate of retirement plans will also depend onhow ambitiously the White House and Congress lower corporate,business, and individual rates.

In the Republican blueprint, individual rates would be reducedto 12, 25, and 33 percent. The blueprint is a framework for reform,and does not include the specifics of proposed legislation. Itslanguage on retirement savings plans is open ended.

The Tax Policy Center says the blueprint’s reduced individualrates would cost $1.5 trillion over 10 years.

That cost would be offset by the $1.9 trillion raised byeliminating all itemized personal deductions—including 401(k)contributions. Under the think tank’s score of the blueprint,deductions of charitable donations and interest on mortgagepayments are spared. The White House and Congressional Republicanshave said those are the only two deductions that can be guaranteedto survive reform.

This week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he woulduse budget reconciliation to pass tax reform. That would requireonly a simple majority in the Senate to pass, but it would alsoplace stricter requirements on tax cut pay-fors.

But the White House has contradicted McConnell, and said it isnot necessarily committed to relying on budget reconciliation topass tax reform.

At the Americans for Prosperity forum, Marc Short and Sec.Mnuchin said the Administration has had productive meetings withCongressional Democrats.

Short also suggested Senate Democrats from upper Midwest statesmay have a hard time explaining opposition to tax reform toconstituents. Democratic Senate seats in Ohio, Indiana, Missouri,West Virginia, and North Dakota—states that all broke for PresidentTrump in 2016--are up for grabs in 2018.