We applaud Chairman Kevin Brady and the House Ways and Means Committee for their efforts to grow our economy by fixing our broken tax code.  By releasing their “mark”, the Ways and Means Committee is taking an important step to make tax reform a reality in this Congress.

For three decades, it has been the policy of this nation to allow qualifying businesses to organize as flow-through tax entities in order to raise capital from a broad base of investors by utilizing public equity markets.  This structure has proven to be a resilient, effective and efficient way for MLPs to, among other things, build critical infrastructure for domestic energy sources, particularly natural gas, natural gas liquids (NGLs), crude oil, refined products and renewable fuels including ethanol and biodiesel.  As a country, we have an energy infrastructure system that is reliable, durable and dynamic.  Investment in this system quickly responds to new sources of supply and demand, which facilitates lower costs of delivered energy to homes and businesses.

While we are still in the process of analyzing the specific proposals and how they may affect MLPs and our unitholders, we are pleased that the proposed legislation not only continues to recognize the importance of the MLP pass-through structure, but also makes available to our unitholders the 25% rate for business income from MLPs.

We look forward to continuing to work with Congress and the Administration as the process moves forward.

The text of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act can be found  here and a section-by-section analysis can be found here.