Posted on 11/27/2017 10:55:44 PM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
It’s all fun and games until you start taking money out of people’s pockets. If those people are the people that put you in power, things could get ugly quickly.
The advice to ask about the possibility of a different structure for small businesses came to me from an accountant who visited for Thanksgiving, by the way. She’ll be looking into it more in depth after a bill is signed. I don’t run a small business at this time but do find the subject interesting.
“...adjust other brackets as needed to make the math work,...”
That is where the problem comes, somebody has to pay to make the whole thing work.
Until congress has the balls to slash welfare to the bone and starts taxing the leeches that pay nothing, there can’t be any real tax cuts.
Bookmark.
This turkey was written by lobbyists. Small guys don’t have lobbyists. Big corporations do. Republicans are owned by lobbyists. Republicans seem preprogrammed to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. It’s who they are.
Just think how many more jobs they'd create if they really cut taxes and spending?
I'm curious why you are so in favor of this plan? It sucks. It's another boon to CPA's, lawyers and accountants. It just complicates taxes more than they are already.
Why aren't the lowest brackets paying some taxes? EVERYONE should pay taxes on their income if one person has to. This crap of getting back more than you paid in is a double tax on those of us who pay. Not only are we paying our share but we have to pay theirs.
Why are there no cuts to the budget? Who cares if a tax plan is neutral? I want taxes to go down - for everyone.
I forgot to ask: Is that next year or over ten years? Nine hundred thousand new jobs isn't much, really.
Well we didnt elect Trump to see more of our money taken by the federal govt to be spent on the pet projects of pretty much the same set of fools thats been in power for decades
Such waste and we are forced to subdidize it all while hearing “ tax cut tax cut tax cut” from a bunch of rich scheming incompetent liars
Just cut taxes for all Americans instead of playing class envy and income redistribution games like we dont see whats going on
The tax bill is intended to fix several structural problems -- not all of them, but some big ones. It brings the U.S. corporate tax rate down to a competitive level. It moves us to territorial taxation. It should encourage U.S. companies to repatriate some of the dollars they have stashed overseas, because the current tax code makes it stupid to bring them home. It eliminates the death tax. That's a lot.
The whining is because the authors have to pass it under reconciliation, which means they have to comply with budget rules. They needed offsetting revenue increases to balance at least some of the reforms.
This brings us to a simple substantive and political test. There are a lot of things wrong with the U.S. tax code, but the biggest structural problems are on the corporate side (due to leftist class warfare over the years). The biggest loopholes, not surprisingly, are on the individual side. At the top of the list are the big, popular middle class deductions: the deductibility of state and local taxes and home mortgage interest. These things are bad policy for several reasons, but they are politically sensitive.
So: if reformers can't touch regressive subsidies that incentivize bad behavior in high-tax states, we might as well give up on tax reform. An across-the-board rate reduction will be rolled back the moment the Democrats again have a majority. Structural changes are likely to be more durable. The things that this bill targets are stupidly self-destructive. While the Democrats will demagogue the changes as a matter of short term political disinformation, changing them going forward will be much more difficult.
The Republicans should follow this bill with an immediate second package focusing on tax reform and relief on the individual side. The key there would be to lower the rates while broadening the base. Again, most of the individual exemptions should go. All employer contributions to individual health insurance and retirement plans, for example, should be counted as taxable income to the employee (with taxation deferred on thrift savings contributions). Imagine: letting people know what their health insurance really costs ....
Even more radical, I'd make all government transfer payments fully taxable. I grant that most people getting food stamps, Medicaid and Obamacare subsidies, and housing benefits aren't making enough money to pay much in taxes anyhow. But welfare clients ought to go through the exercise anyhow. If taxpayers have to file annually, so should tax eaters. At least they'd know how much they are costing their neighbors. And it would be a big step towards policing fraud and making everything much more transparent and accountable.
Finally, lest I forget, eliminate the non-taxable status of state and municipal bonds. That's just another subsidy to the spenders.
The really big tax loopholes are on the individual side. The contested deductions on the corporate side are mostly much smaller and are often quite defensible both in terms of tax theory and public policy. Why should expensing or accelerated depreciation, for example, be considered a giveaway? Smart countries want their companies to aggressively invest and modernize. Our tax code is viciously stupid.
Federal statute can. The "Byrd Rule" is Federal law(2 U.S.C. § 644) in the form of an amendment to the 1974 Congressional Budget Act of 1974 which was passed by Congress in 1990. It's not just a Senate rule that can be modified at a whim.
If the stupid party doesn’t truly cut taxes, repeal Obamacare, and build the wall, there will be a massacare in the 2018 midterms.
Me too.
It's not a start. This is it. The start and the end.
And deleted the personal exemption. For a family of three then there is no net increase in exemptions. For a family of four our more the taxable income goes up.
How will it increase wages?
Senate Bill
The Senate bill would also eliminate personal exemptions. As was the case with HR 1, the Senate bill will attempt to ease the pain on families by increasing the Child Tax Credit to $1,650, a $50 increase over the House proposal but a $650 rise when compared to current law. The Senate proposal provides protection for the upper reaches of the middle class that is missing from the House bill, however, by increasing the income levels at which phase-out of the credit begins to $500,000 (if single, $1,000,000 if married). This will enable many more taxpayers to make up for lost personal exemptions with the enhanced CTC as compared to HR 1.
What about the adults in the family? They're raising the standard deduction by $12000, they say. The increased child tax credit will make up for the loss of the standard deduction, they say. Well there is no tax credit for adults so the $12,000 increase is offset by the loss of $8100 in personal exemption. Each child cuts that deduction by $4050 and the increase in child tax credit may offset it up to a point. But the larger the family, especially when the income in over $80,000 the more likely you are to have your taxes go up.
> I forgot to ask: Is that next year or over ten years? Nine hundred thousand new jobs isn’t much, really.
“over the next decade” and I agree, not much but likely a ‘static’ evaluation. In reality it may be much more, I’d expect.
You forgot to include this part:
“The Senate proposal provides protection for the upper reaches of the middle class that is missing from the House bill, however, by increasing the income levels at which phase-out of the credit begins to $500,000 (if single, $1,000,000 if married). This will enable many more taxpayers to make up for lost personal exemptions with the enhanced CTC as compared to HR 1.”
Look, I was responding to how Wayne Root framed his questions. There’s more to it than he was saying.
Would I prefer a low flat tax - yes! But this “populist” phrasing of Root was insulting and sounds more like the liberals and never Trumpers....
> I’m curious why you are so in favor of this plan? It sucks.
Again, just responding to Wayne Root’s phrasing of the questions with tax foundation’s answers.
I’d prefer a flat tax, but at this point, I hope this is just a start and Trump doesn’t need another ‘loss’.
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