As long as SALT is in the bill it won’t straight up die. Way too much of the Democratic caucus wants it to let that happen.
If there is no CBO score by 11/15 what is going to happen is that the moderates in the house will have to actually state what they want removed from the bill without hiding behind the CBO. And then it’ll get taken to the Senate where more is stripped out.
Doesn’t that kind of go against the whole rich-need-to-pay-their-fair-share? Lifting the TCJA’s SALT cap only benefits people who pay >$10k in state/local taxes.
~Max
I get the reasoning behind SALT but if the democrats wind up leaving most of the Trump tax cuts on the rich but raising the SALT cap, they’re effectively sending the message that the GOP taxes the rich too much.
I believe the way it works in the current bill the very top earners wouldn’t be seeing the biggest benefit.
Honestly though I’m an upper middle class homeowner in a high COL area and we need to pay our fair share too. Most of us wound up benefiting from lower interest rates and the strong stock market over the pandemic.
Is that the kind of thing a CBO report would clarify? I assume the CBO exists because lawmakers can’t comprehend their own legislation. Not to impugn legislators, this tax and economy stuff is really complicated.
~Max
AFAIK the distribution of the effective tax break from SALT isn’t all that complicated - if you cap it at 80k then it flattens the benefit for people who paid more than that in state and local, so you can just look at who those people are.
The complicated part might end up being whether the gimmicks to prevent SALT from having a massive effect on the deficit.
Objective analysis like CBO is generally good. However it becomes a problem when it’s either used as an excuse to avoid a hard commitment or whether people essentially reverse engineer their budgeting methods to misconstrue the effects of a policy.
EDIT: Also US lawmakers are atrocious at understanding what they’re voting on. Unfortunately the CBO doesn’t address the root cause which is lack of motivation not lack of intelligence.
I didn’t mean clarifying how SALT would work but whether the top earners would see the biggest benefit from the act as a whole.
The U.S. electorate is even more atrocious in understanding what their lawmakers are voting on. For my part, I still haven’t finished going through the For the People Act (H.R.1, 117th). I haven’t put more than a cursory look at the Build Back Better bill or framework or whatever it is now… H.R.5376, 117th?
~Max
Yes this is a major factor in lawmakers not being motivated enough to learn what they’re voting on.
Depends on how you define “rich”. I’m not saying that they aren’t pretty well off, but most of my clients live in homes where they pay over 10k a year just in property taxes, and probably pay another 10-15k in state income taxes.
When people talk about those not paying their fair share, they are usually talking about people significantly wealthier than this.