The 2017/2018 Trump/GOP tax plan

[Ruken]

Yeah I was talking about the mortgage deduction. Definitely not part of the proposal.

[HurricaneDitka]

@John_Mace

I can’t imagine that will fly. CA might actually secede over something like that. It would be a huge tax increase for many of us. Or is it expected to be offset by lower rates?

Didn’t we already establish that California needs permission from the rest of us to secede? What if the rest of us just want to make them our donor-state bitches / perpetual piggy bank?*

• Note: I personally don’t wish for this, but I would find a lot of irony in it if “wealthy” California was made to “pay their fair share”.

[BobLibDem]

I think this is a bigger lift than health care and they gave heath care a half-ass attempt. There are a boatload of lobbyists for every deduction that they want to eliminate. Take away the mortgage insurance and/or property tax deductions and you depress the piss out of the housing market. A lot of middle class voters who just get by thanks to these deductions are going to be mad as hornets if they get taken away. Sellers who were counting on making a little money on their house are going to get less than they were hoping for since there will be fewer buyers who can afford to pay what they want to sell for.

You can bet that being a Republican plan, it’s going to benefit the elite. The question is how much can they screw over the poor and middle class and hope to get re-elected? My bet is this goes nowhere. The Republicans are too split on how they want to do this and they represent too many special interests to be able to agree on what this tax cut package will look like.

I see we’re seeing the same old lies: family farms threatened by estate tax, the tax cuts pay for themselves, the cuts will stimulate the economy, the deficit will not be affected, we’ll grow the economy enough to pay for it. These are all bullshit, they know they’re bullshit, but they’re going to try to stick it to us anyway.

[Corry_El]

@Bone

I thought upthread there was mention of the mortgage tax deduction.

In any case, the effective tax rate is the blended overall rate, not the marginal rate. I think the effective tax rate is more informative when calculating net impact since an overall reduction in taxable income affects the entire pool of income, not just the top portion removed when comparing net net.

When I’m calculating what my effective income is after deductions for purposes of adjusting my withholdings, I certainly use the effective tax rate on an all in basis for the year, not just the marginal rates.

I’m not sure I understand that. But, let’s say right now you forget to take a deduction of $10k and you’re in a 25% bracket whether or not you do. That’s going to cost you $2.5k, not $10k times the ‘effective’ rate, which I’m still not sure how you’re even defining. But the answer to the impact on eliminating a given deduction is definitely according to the marginal rate*. It’s a change at the margin.

*for that change. It might not come out to exactly one of the rates in the table if the change pushes you across a bracket boundary. Which BTW is another reason it’s impossible to calculate the exact effect of this proposal on various individuals. They haven’t given the income cutoff levels for the three (or ‘possibly four’) new brackets.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

ETA: Dang it; I knew I was taking too long to format this post!

Hey, thanks for the lead-in to my next link, BobLibDem!

Trump’s Tax Fight Could Look a Lot Like the War Over Healthcare

The going theory is that this framework is purposefully vague because Republicans wanted something they could show unity and progress on, and because they know getting into the nitty-gritty will be a nightmare. That, to the mind of Marc Goldewein of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, makes this situation similar to the one Republicans found themsleves in over actually repealing Obamacare: what seemed like an easy fight on a unifying issue became an ugly squabble.

Still, taxes should be easier to sort out than healthcare, as there are so many chips to bargain with to win votes. It helps that lives are not literally at stake, and, as Frank Clemente of Americans for Tax Fairness of Republicans put it of Republicans, “This is the Holy Grail for them, and if they can’t deliver, basically, it’s game over.”

However, Clemente warns against underestimating the ability of lobbyist groups to throw wrenches in legislation they believe would hurt their causes. And then there’s Trump. Major legislation like this usually requires strong leadership from the White House to sell it and help cover for members of Congress casting votes their constituents might not like. It barely needs to be said at this point that Trump does not exhibit that kind of leadership, nor would he ever take a political bullet for anyone not named Trump.

It already looks like the president will be more hindrance than help in this fight. His promises earlier this week about not reducing taxes on the rich forced Republicans to amend the already-finished plan at the last minute to include the option of adding a fourth high-income bracket. And his own history of exploiting tax loopholes and refusal to disclose his tax returns, which we’d need to see to understand if and how these cuts would benefit him and his family, doesn’t make him the most credible populist messenger on these issues.

The consensus on Wall Street seems to be that this is such a messy topic that we may not see a vote on any final legislation until next year. And the experts I’ve spoken to suspect any actual law will only broadly resemble the framework, and that said framework could be abandoned for more modest changes. “I would expect to see bets hedged before too long,” as Tanner put it.

All of which is to say that rather than a slam-dunk that provides a boost for Republicans heading into the midterms, taxes are likely be another humbling slog for Trump and his party.

There’s no new info in the piece, but it’s a decent enough Op-Ed. There are a few good questions he raises, like

For starters, it’s stil decidedly unclear what income ranges—that is, which Americans—will fall into each of the new tax brackets. Also: What individual or corporate deductions will survive this purge? (The plan does call for the preservation of write-offs for charitable giving, education spending, mortgage interest, and retirement savings, among other categories, but does not specify how to preserve them or what else could be saved.) How much will the child tax credit increase? How can Congress stop wealthy people from posing as partnerships or sole proprietorships to game these new, lower tax rates? What would be the rates and mechanisms to reduce taxation on foreign profits without encouraging American companies to move most of their operations offshore? And won’t lowering the top tax bracket and eliminating two key taxes on the wealthy help them at the expense of the general public?

“Who knew taxation was such a complicated subject? No one. No one. Nobody knew. But it is; it’s complicate- look, we’re moving forward on this and very soon I think you’re going to like what you see when we’re done, which will be very soon. The soonest. And it’s going to be fantastic; the best. Very soon.”

[John_Mace]

@HurricaneDitka

Didn’t we already establish that California needs permission from the rest of us to secede?

When it comes to RE Taxes, we Californians throw all the rules out the window. We feel about our homes like Texans feel about their guns!!

[wolfpup]

@sleestak

post snipped (Note, beaten to the punch by manson1972)

First, define ‘fair’.

That is, as far as I can tell, where the conversation goes off the rails as there are many definitions of ‘fair’.

My personal definition, likely to be very different than yours, is that fair means each person pays an equal amount. Since that isn’t really possible due to folks who have no income and people who have very low incomes the next best version of fair is everyone pays a fixed percentage across the board, regardless of income type. I also suspect that doesn’t meet your definition of ‘fair’.

So, before we go any further we have to define what ‘fair’ means.

I suspect that isn’t possible.

Slee

I don’t see why you would need to compromise your principles if you believe that everyone paying an equal amount is the appropriate definition of “fair”. You could propose a law, say, that every man, woman, and child must pay $5000 a year to the federal government regardless of income. That is surely the epitome of equality and fairness, no? Can’t argue with arithmetic! The fact that some don’t have the money should not be an obstacle to principle – they could just go into debt, and we could re-institute debtors’ prisons and Dickensian workhouses to deal with it.

OTOH, if this seems brutal and archaic, what does that say about the “fixed percentage” idea? Say the fixed percentage was 20%. Under this scheme, someone making, say, $100 million annually would still have $80 million to play with, and it’s doubtful that the other $20m would be missed or used for anything other than paper transactions on the investment markets. Whereas someone making $20,000 annually with a family to support would no longer be able to do so, and something – either the kids’ food or other aspects of basic well-being, or the family’s housing – would have to be sacrificed. Which sort of takes us back, through a slightly different route, to debtors’ prisons and Dickensian workhouses. There’s nothing “fair” about a policy just because it uses a fixed numerical percentage. The real point is that this is a lot more than just a matter of human empathy, but an entirely pragmatic matter of it being a major detriment to society as a whole when significant portions of it are deprived of the basic necessities of life, or when the hard-working middle class has to struggle so that the very wealthy can retain a few more percentage points of obscene amounts of wealth. It’s ultimately not even about fairness at all, which is so vague and subjective that it’s not even a meaningful metric here, but rather about the most basic kind of rationality and outcomes that are a net benefit for everyone.

And that’s why we have progressive rather than regressive taxation in all civilized countries. The details of tax policy are of course always subject to debate, and in that sense we may disagree on what policies are the most “fair”. But surely there is no pragmatic, reasoned argument that the rich should not support a higher tax burden, other than the most absolutist dogmatic ideology that usually comes from wealthy plutocrats, the kind that usually centers on the government being “thieves”, and the astoundingly short-sighted, myopic assertion that every dime and dollar that anyone earns is entirely his own, with no obligation whatsoever to the vast and costly physical and social infrastructure that allowed him to earn it.

[begbert2]

Obviously the only true way to be fair is to ensure that, after taxes, everyone is making the same amount of money.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

AP story here.

The new GOP tax plan delivers a big tax cut to the wealthiest Americans while some in lower tax brackets would end up paying more, according to an analysis Friday from prominent nonpartisan researchers.

The plan being touted by President Donald Trump as the biggest tax cut ever delivers 50 percent of its total tax benefit to taxpayers in the top 1 percent, those with incomes above $730,000 a year, according to the Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution. For those wealthy taxpayers, their after-tax incomes would increase 8.5 percent next year.

For other taxpayers, though, the benefits are far more modest or non-existent, the report finds. Taxpayers in the bottom 95 percent would see tax cuts averaging 1.2 percent of after-tax income or less next year.

And about 12 percent of taxpayers would face a tax increase next year, of $1,800 on average. That includes more than a third of taxpayers making between about $150,000 and $300,000, mostly because of the elimination of many itemized deductions.

By 2027, taxes would increase for about a quarter of Americans, including nearly 30 percent of those earning about $50,000 to $150,000 a year, and 60 percent of people making $150,000 to $300,000, according to the study.

“The number of taxpayers with a tax increase rises over time,” it said. That’s because the Republican plan would replace personal exemptions, which are tied to inflation, with some tax credits that aren’t tied to inflation.

The Tax Policy Center noted that its analysis was preliminary, based on a proposal that itself lacked key information, such as the proposed income brackets that would correspond to the three new tax rates Republicans envision replacing the current seven

The new budget plan would permit the upcoming tax measure to add $1.5 trillion over the coming decade to the $20 trillion national debt. The Tax Policy Center finds the GOP tax plan would reduce federal revenues by $2.4 trillion over the next decade.

[wolfpup]

@AP

The new GOP tax plan delivers a big tax cut to the wealthiest Americans while some in lower tax brackets would end up paying more … [it] delivers 50 percent of its total tax benefit to taxpayers in the top 1 percent …

Is anyone surprised? Anyone at all?

[septimus]

At present Americans pay an average of $4600 in individual income taxes. It would be fair to jack up the taxes for SocSec and Medicare, which are underfunded, and borrow a few more 100’s of Million annually from China. Do both and we can cut the average income tax in half.

@sleestak

First, define ‘fair’.

Some would say that $2300 per each person, young or old, rich or poor, would be the fairest tax. But if you think about it this discriminates against the rich.

The rich use private schools — is it really fair to make them also fund public schools? They often have their own private security — why should they have to pay as much for police as the people in crime-ridden ghettos? The rich shouldn’t be forced to subsidize national parks — they vacation in the Caribbean or on the Riviera. And what sense does it make for the rich to help fund the Dept. of Labor??

A fair tax would be progressive; something like this:

• Earning less than $75,000 per year — pay $3000
• Earning $75,000 to $150,000 — pay $2500
• Earning $150,000 to $350,000 — pay $2000
• Earning $350,000 to $550,000 — pay $1500
• Earning $550,000 to $750,000 — pay $1000
  Anyone earning more than $1,000,000 is probably a Job Creator. The government should be subsidizing them, not taxing them. I know the Trump plan won’t accomplish all this, but it will be a big step in the right direction.

Yes, the $3000 tax would be burdensome on many freeloaders. I think the tax would motivate them to find work! And the prohibitions against cash for kidneys and other organs should be repealed of course — Win, win!

[Snowboarder_Bo]

Okay; here we go! The House Thursday passed a $4.1 trillion budget plan that’s a critical step for the party’s drive to rewrite the tax code later this year.

The 2018 House GOP budget promises deep cuts to social programs and Cabinet agency budgets and reprises a controversial plan to turn Medicare into a voucher-like program for future retirees. Republicans controlling the chamber have no plans to actually implement those cuts, however.

Instead, the budget plan’s chief purpose is to set the stage for a tax overhaul plan that is the party’s top political priority as well as a longtime policy dream of key leaders like Speaker Paul Ryan.

The plan, passed by a nearly party-line 219-206 vote, calls for more than $5 trillion in spending cuts over the coming decade, promising to slash Medicaid by about $1 trillion over the next 10 years, repeal the “Obamacare” health law, and force huge cuts to domestic programs funded each year by Congress. Eighteen Republicans opposed the measure.

“It’s a budget that will help grow our economy, and it’s a budget that will help rein in our debt,” said Ryan, R-Wis. “It reforms Medicaid. It strengthens Medicare.”

But Republicans are not actually planning to impose any of those cuts with follow-up legislation that would be required under Washington’s Byzantine budget rules. Instead, those GOP proposals for spending cuts are limited to nonbinding promises, and even a token 10-year, $200 billion spending cut package demanded by tea party House Republicans appears likely to be scrapped in upcoming talks with the Senate.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

A bit of news today:

A GOP lawmaker says Republicans who are balking at supporting President Donald Trump’s big tax plan need some “accommodations” on its proposed repeal of the federal deduction for state and local taxes.

Rep. Chris Collins of New York says a cap on the amount of state and local taxes that could be deducted, as opposed to a total elimination of the deduction, could bring the fractious Republicans on board.

Collins says repealing the deduction “would impact too many middle-income people.”

Republican lawmakers from high-tax states controlled by Democrats, especially New York, New Jersey and California, contend that eliminating the deduction would make people be taxed twice. The deduction is claimed by an estimated 44 million Americans. Administration officials say it forces the federal government to subsidize states and wealthy households.

I have never lived in a state with income tax, so I’m really in the dark on this aspect of the plan.

I also don’t understand how “eliminating the deduction would make people be taxed twice” or why that’s impossible/not allowed/whatever if the taxes are from two different agencies that both have the power to levy taxes, so I’d welcome any explanations.

[k9bfriender]

@Snowboarder_Bo

A bit of news today:I have never lived in a state with income tax, so I’m really in the dark on this aspect of the plan.

I also don’t understand how “eliminating the deduction would make people be taxed twice” or why that’s impossible/not allowed/whatever if the taxes are from two different agencies that both have the power to levy taxes, so I’d welcome any explanations.

As it is, when I send money off to my state and local tax agencies, I then deduct that amount from my taxable income. I only pay the tax on my income once.

If the fed gets rid of that deduction, then I will pay my state and local, and then pay fed taxes on my full income, before those taxes. I am paying tax on my income twice.

As to why it is impossible, or unconstitutional, well it isn’t. It’s just the way it’s been done, as far back as I can remember, and a quick research didn’t turn up exactly when those deductions were put into place, so WAG, they’ve been in place since income tax was implemented. This would be a change that would increase the tax burden of anyone who pays state and local taxes, which is most of us.

Those in traditionally blue states tend to have higher state and local taxes, so it is a greater burden on them.

[Ruken]

You could, in theory, be taxed at greater than 100% combined rate. Federal tax rates have exceeded 90% at times. If you make an additional dollar and the feds take 94 cents (1944-45) and the state takes 15 cents, that is a very strange situation indeed. With the deduction, the feds would take 80 cents. Leaving you a shiny nickel.

Today, rates are too low for this to be an issue.

I suppose the states could always allow you to deduct your federal taxes, then just increase rates for a net wash.

[k9bfriender]

@Ruken

You could, in theory, be taxed at greater than 100% combined rate. Federal tax rates have exceeded 90% at times. If you make an additional dollar and the feds take 94 cents (1944-45) and the state takes 15 cents, that is a very strange situation indeed. With the deduction, the feds would take 80 cents. Leaving you a shiny nickel.

Today, rates are too low for this to be an issue.

I suppose the states could always allow you to deduct your federal taxes, then just increase rates for a net wash.

Of course, if states did that, then they would suddenly find themselves short on revenue.

[Ruken]

Also while you may have never lived in a state with income tax, the SALT deduction can be applied to (income tax OR sales tax) AND real estate taxes. So all seven states without an income tax still have of returns that deduct SALT.

[Ruken]

@k9bfriender

Of course, if states did that, then they would suddenly find themselves short on revenue.

Not if they:

@Ruken

increase rates for a net wash.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@k9bfriender

As it is, when I send money off to my state and local tax agencies, I then deduct that amount from my taxable income. I only pay the tax on my income once.

If the fed gets rid of that deduction, then I will pay my state and local, and then pay fed taxes on my full income, before those taxes. I am paying tax on my income twice.

:smack: Of course; I should have realized that both agencies were going to sue the same gross income figure to calculate taxes owed. Thanks for the low-down.

I agree that this is unacceptable.

[k9bfriender]

@Ruken

Not if they:

Ah, I thought you meant a net wash for the tax payer, not the state. My misunderstanding.