If there’s any hope to be gleaned, it will be every scary thing that won’t happen because of how unfathomably lazy he is.
I can’t speak to tips, but I heard something suggesting that the people that voted for Trump because he said he wouldn’t tax overtime are going to be rather surprised when they learn the hard way that Trump’s plan to prevent taxes on overtime pay is to change some labor laws to make it easier for employers to avoid overtime pay in the first place.
I was going to add that the man has never worked a day in his life, but I realized I needed to make an exception for how busy he was in the 70s keeping minorities from renting in Daddy’s buildings.
Agree. I’m hoping it will just be another shit show, and nothing gets done. I suspect he’ll take some early “easy wins”, so we’ll still gave to get past some serious tariff issues and human rights violations.
I also figure there are quite a few Republicans in Congress who are smart enough to know they’ll lose their jobs if many of Trump’s plans come to fruition, who also have the know-how to derail or delay a lot of universally bad ideas.
Yes, he’s lazy but plenty of people are willing to use his authority to get those scary things done.
'Zactly.
trump was just the vehicle to install all those ambitious evil people in power. He could spend every single second of the next 4 years golfing and the country will still be destroyed by his coterie.
Can someone explain why no taxes on tips won’t happen?
Yes, as I understand it, it’s a doubly-bad policy as it only helps a minority of service workers, who are not always the worst off, and secondly is open to exploitation by high-earning workers (e.g bonuses / commissions / whatever may be shoved through as “tips” if the wording is not clear enough).
But being bad and expensive is true of almost everything trump has said he will do. And most things remain on the table. Why are we sure this one isn’t?
- Trump never had any intention of making good on it and it was just something he said to get votes
- Congressional Republicans have no interest in passing it
- Democrats aren’t likely to act on it either since it would invite abuse by employers
They will pass it, with a little noticed amendment lowering the minimum wage for tipped workers, so they become totally dependent on tips, and employers have lower overhead.
Deep State
He promised no taxes on Social Security! Yippee…
What do mean there’s no more Social Security?
I was chatting with a group of friends the other day and I was surprised that none of them knew that currently Social Security isn’t fully taxed as regular income. Since they all collect SS I guess none of them do their own taxes.
If you have significant income in addition to your SS payment, a portion of your Social Security payments are taxable, but if it’s your only income, it’s effectively not taxable.
The calculations are complicated, but I collect SS, I have additional income that’s roughly equivalent to my SS payment, and I still haven’t hit the threshold where my SS is taxable. So I’m calling “No taxes on Social Security” another perk for the well off.
It is possible for someone living only on SS to find it is partly taxable. But it takes the rare combo of receiving at or near the max possible SS benefit, and having no other income from e.g employee pensions, investments, or IRA/401K withdrawals.
It’s a decent bet that somebody who’s earned enough wages over their lifetime to be receiving near the max SS benefit has managed to save at least a few dollars. So practically speaking pretty rare. But it can be done. 
Anyone interested can read this for the nitty gritty; it’s not that complicated. Since 2022 when this article was written the threshold amounts are slightly different but the logic is unchanged.
Next thing you’re going to tell me is that most folks will never pay the Estate Tax Death Tax!
If I use this calculator and input the annual maximum SS benefit of $58476, it shows that no portion of the benefit is taxable.
I actually thought a few thousand dollars of that was going to be taxable until I added the standard deduction, which would reduce the taxable income to well below the threshold. I’m not sure if the calculator is taking the standard deduction into account or if there’s something else going on, but I stand by my original post.
I wonder if the taxation on Social Security is related to, as per SCOTUS, it is insurance and not a retirement plan.
100%. Minions work. Trump golfs (as @LSLGuy said).
Yes, this (bolding mine).
There are some faces the expressions on which I’d like to see when this dawns on them.
I think it’ll be a long wait for most of them. They’ll just blame the loss of income on the Democrats.
Most tax schemes are mostly perks for the well-off. Here in Canada, when Harper was PM, they started a tax-free savings account system, in which you could save a certain amount per year, possibly as stocks or bonds, and the profit from interest or increasing value was non-taxable. Sounds great, except you can only use it if you have that much extra money lying around every year.
At the end of Harper’s term, they made a big to-do about increasing the annual contribution limit, but of course, if you weren’t maximizing your deposits every year, increasing the limit doesn’t give you any benefit, so again, it’s mostly for the well-off.
As I understand it, the standard (or itemized) deduction is not relevant to the “What of SS is taxable?” calculation. The deduction does affect the “What do I owe in total taxes?” question though. So perhaps you and I are talking past one another.
On that calculator the entries should be “single, 58476, 0, 0, 0”. Which results in 2119 of taxable SS.
For married folks = joint filers where both are getting the max it’s more than doubled: Enter “joint, 116952, 0, 0, 0” and the calculator says 18304.6 is taxable. The reason for the big difference is the various thresholds for joint are not double the single thresholds, but more like 1.4x the single thresholds.
Now once somebody plugs the 2116 or 18304 into their tax return on line 6B as part of “taxable income”, they’ll also eventually get to the itemized or standard deduction (for one or two people as appropriate) on line 12. Once that is added in (subtracted out really), their taxable income on line 15 will be, as you say, zero.
Ultimately I was talking about line 6B and you about 15. Their SS is partly taxable. But other features of the tax code more than offset that, resulting in a complete tax bill of $0.
In my case 85% of my SS will always be taxable due to the rest of my income. Oh well. Unless trump “fixes” that by just taking my SS away. Which might happen.