The National Association of Manufacturers pushed hard for passage of five-year Net Operating Loss (NOL) tax relief this year as critical to promoting investment and aiding the recovery. The NAM certainly counts President Obama’s signing of H.R. 3545, the unemployment insurance bill with the NOL tax relief, as a big help to many manufacturers.

And retail too! Ian Swanson of The Hill reports that angle today in “Black Friday boom? Retail sales boosted by carry-back legislation“:

“We think it will have a benefit,” said Craig Sherman, vice president of government affairs for the National Retail Federation (NRF), which lobbied vigorously for the measure.

Sherman said the provision will help retailers by providing money to pay for adding inventory or to hire more workers to meet the masses of December shoppers. Without the change in tax law, firms could only carry back losses to the last two tax years. Given the recession, that didn’t help many retailers who had seen minimal or no profits over the past two years.

Even if the money isn’t yet technically available, Sherman said retailers are using the incoming funds as collateral to get loans from their banks.

The NAM’s webpage with background and documents on the new NOL law is here.

The National Retail Federation previewed Black Friday sales earlier this week with a survey and news release, “Black Friday Bargains to Attract Up to 134 Million Shoppers This Year.”

CNBC host and analyst and all-around smart guy Larry Kudlow comments on the inclusion of pro-growth tax relief in the Obama stimulus plan, “Team Obama Adds Business Tax Cuts.” He’s positive, but says more can be done:

However, as yet there is no Obama signal for the most powerful tax incentives that would slash the 35 percent top corporate rate to something around 20 percent. This should apply both to large C-corps and small-business S-corps. It would attract investment, improve future job creation, and relieve consumers who really shoulder the corporate tax costs. Additionally, full cash expensing for business investment write-offs would provide an even greater bang for the buck.

So while the new tax-refund plan and faster depreciation are positives, they are still much weaker than a full-bore supply-side tax-rate reduction that could even morph into full-fledged corporate tax reform. Now we wait for a Republican response, which hopefully will be bold corporate tax reform as well as reduced individual tax rates (at least for the middle class).