Jason Smith was first elected to represent Missouri’s Eighth Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives during a special election in June 2013. He was reelected in November 2014. He is dedicated to protecting rural America against intrusive government regulations, expanding markets for farmers, and protecting his constituents’ rustic ways of life.

Hailing originally from Salem, Missouri, Smith attended the University of Missouri-Columbia, earning degrees in Agricultural Economics and Business Administration before proceeding to law school at Oklahoma City University.

Why He’s Important to Agents

Rep. Smith serves on the House Budget Committee and, more importantly for our purposes, the powerful Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over the raising of revenue by Congress, including tax reform, tariffs, or revenue aspects of Social Security and Medicare. Ways and Means played a large role during the tax reform push in the last Congress. .

Rep. Smith is the lead author of the Main Street Tax Certainty Act (H.R. 216), which would make permanent the 20 percent passthrough deduction created in the 2017 tax law. PIA National played a key role in ensuring this tax relief for passthrough (S corporations) entities after the tax reform law (P.L. 115-141) was passed in December 2017. We succeeded in our advocacy for the deduction to apply to insurance agents. However, the passthrough deduction is a temporary provision of the tax law, unlike the permanent nature of the tax benefits for C corporations. As a result, the benefit for PIA members whose agencies are organized as passthroughs will end on December 31, 2025, unless Congress acts.

PIA National is pleased to have a strong ally in Rep. Smith. His leadership on this legislation has been vital to PIA National’s effort to provide permanent tax relief for independent agencies that organize as passthroughs.