I received an update from Paul Suplizio, President of the WOTC Coalition today. There is recent progress on the legislative front for an extension of the Work Opportunity Tax Credit.
The WOTC program is currently slated to expire on December 31, 2011. While that might at first seem alarming if your company has been relying on the program to offset hiring costs, its par for the WOTC game. Over the years, Congress has repeatedly allowed the program to expire or nearly expire before renewing it for another term.
Here’s a brief quote from Paul Suplizio’s update this morning.

“Congressmen Aaron Schock (R-IL) and Charles B. Rangel (D-NY) have introduced a bill, H.R. 2082, Work Opportunity Credit Improvements Act, calling for a three-year extension of WOTC till December 31, 2014. Congressman Schock and Congressman Rangel are Ways and Means Committee members and thus able to work for passage within the committee. “

“This is the bill WOTC supporters should rally around as Congress takes up tax legislation in the next two critical months. It’s important we get a maximum number of House members to co-sponsor H.R. 2082 before the measure is taken up in Ways and Means.”

The bill not only proposes to extend the WOTC for 3 years, it includes a number of very interesting refinements to the program and adds back the disconnected youth category.
If you have an interest in the WOTC program, you should definitely contact your member of Congress to recommend their sponsorship of this bill.  I plan to contact our legislators next week AND to send a correspondence to every member of the legislature about this issue.
Please feel welcome to contact me if I can help your efforts in any way.  I can offer you a mail-merge ready list of US Legislators that you could use in preparing your correspondence.