He was most noted for his role in the 1986 "unlikely triumph of tax reform" while he was chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee. President Ronald Reagan had proposed the idea of tax reform in 1984, but Packwood's initial response was indifference. However, he played a leading role in fashioning a "radically new tax code that will raise business taxes by some $120 billion over five years—and lower personal income taxes by roughly the same amount." Historians of the Act have written that his turnaround "revived the dying tax reform bill", and credited his "ingenuity and astonishing legislative skill" for passage of the law, which "despite its warts and wrinkles…succeeded at the fundamental purpose of reform".