Moran Eyes Reconciliation to Stop Tax on Broadband Grants

WASHINGTON, March 11, 2025 – Senator Jerry Moran, R-Kan., is pushing to exempt broadband grants from federal taxes through an upcoming reconciliation package.

"Reconciliation is probably the only possibility," Moran said of his Broadband Grant Tax Treatment Act at the INCOMPAS Policy Summit on Tuesday. "So it needs to happen there, and it's a modest amount of money — $400 million or so.”

The bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., seeks to exempt federal broadband grants from income taxation. Moran criticized the existing policy, noting that taxing grant funds effectively strips away 20-30% of the money intended for broadband expansion.

"This one ought to be an easy one if you thought that members of Congress had any common sense," he said, as the federal government moves forward with its $42.5 billion investment in broadband infrastructure through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program.

 “[It’s] another way to make certain that the dollars that we're spending.on broadband deployment are spent in a way that are efficient and effective,” Moran said.

Despite historic investments, Moran warned that slow implementation and bureaucratic hurdles leave many communities without reliable broadband access.

"What a sad circumstance this will be for our country if, at the end of the day, after all the money that has been put in over the last decade, we still have so many people with inadequate broadband services," he lamented. "What a detriment that is to families, to education, to seniors — to individual people who are already at a disadvantage.”

Industry groups and state governments have also pushed to make broadband grants tax-free since the bill was first introduced in September 2022.

Broadband industry groups, including INCOMPAS, wrote to the Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee last legislative session urging Congress to pass the legislation and include it in any upcoming tax legislation.