For political reasons. They judged that it’d be easier to renew / make permanent the individual tax cuts than the corporate ones. They’re almost certainly correct in that judgement.
To fit in the reconciliation rules, yes, it was necessary to sunset some portions of the tax bill. I don’t know about “bust” the budget, but the CBO score was that including them permanently would have increased the deficit more than the budget reconciliation rules allowed for. Hence the sunset.
The Republicans tell pleasant sounding lies while the Democrats tell unpleasant truths. People respond better to what sounds good. Which I guess means the Republicans understand human nature better than the Democrats.
How did I get into this?
You mentioned that it was “Immediate gratification.” Certainly don’t feel obligated to respond to my query if it makes you uncomfortable or anything.
Yep, these are the fantasies that the Republican party wants to sell. The fact is that the effective tax rate (not the number that shows up in the tax laws, but what actually ends up getting paid) was right in line with other first-world countries before the tax bill was passed.
Actual US Corporate Tax Rates Are In Line With Comparable Countries
What will end up happening, which was also predicted before the bill’s passage, is that this will start a ‘tax race’ in which other major trading nations will have to slash their taxes to remain competitive, reducing governmental revenues worldwide.
As for increasing salaries, history dispels that Voodoo Economics notion, though the Trumpies are trying to use non-peer-reviewed sources to counter the argument.
Will corporate tax cuts boost workers’ wages?
This is what your ‘Christmas gift’ will end up doing to you.
This sounds like a win to me.
Much of government spending goes to health care and education. So those will have to be cut.
The democrats had better win both houses and the presidency in 2020 as well as a lot of state houses. if they do, they need to make the GOP pay.
Multiple investigations into not just Trump, but the RNC for money laundering Russian money as well as covering up Trump’s crimes and treason
Massive tax hikes on the rich and if possible, tax hikes that affect his voters.
Totally reversing the corporate tax cuts and tax changes that punish liberals in blue states.
Gerrymander the hell out of districts on the state level.
Push for reforms that build the welfare state and the role of government as protector of people. Expand health care, education, child care, etc. Make them impossible to take away.
I await the ‘how horrible, you want to do to the GOP what they do to democrats’ lines. Yes, I do.
It won’t be. I guess that it doesn’t matter to you that it will end up taking services away from the needy, so long as your corporate tax rate gets slashed. Or that it will only exacerbate the deficit spending that your party claims to oppose but continues to quietly espouse.
There are no “massive tax cuts for the rich” in the tax bill. Perhaps you are referring to the reduction in the corporate tax cut from 35% to 21%? But that does not benefit only the rich. Let me explain.
I work for an employee-owned company. I make about $40,000 per year. Some of my coworkers make less and some make more. Nobody in the company earns over $120,000 per year, so I’d say that we can all safely be described as middle class. In addition to our salaries and benefits, all of us receive shares in the company (after we’ve been working there for 3 years) and the company’s profits are divided based on our shares.
Thus, whatever money comes into our company ends up in one of four places:
If the amount going to taxes decreases, then the amount going to the other three places must increase. An increase in #1 or #2 benefits us middle class employees directly. An increase in #3 sets up further benefits down the road. So any way you slice it, lower corporate taxes means more money in our pockets. Needless to say, that comes on top of the very nice cuts in middle class tax rates that the Republicans gave us.
No matter how many times Democrats act like a cut in corporate taxes is a cut exclusively for the rich, it’s not true. That way of thinking completely ignores the millions of poor and middle class Americans who share ownership in a corporation.
40% of stocks are owned by the richest 1%.
71% of stocks are owned by the richest 5%.
84% of stocks are owned by the richest 10%
Just because you say it isnt a tax cut for the rich doesn’t change that it is a tax cut for the rich. Anyone who isn’t trying to rewrite reality to push a political agenda can see this for what it is. There is a reason they made the corporate tax cuts permanent but the income tax cuts for the middle class temporary.
The money that comes in will go to executive pay, stock buyback, dividends, etc. Things that the vast majority of people won’t benefit from.
Employers only pay higher wages when the market demands higher wages. If productivity is up, job mobility is up and unemployment is low then wages go up to find and keep human talent. I see no reason why this would happen under the GOP tax cut for the rich plan.
What benefit does revenge serve? Instead of trying to out-Republican the Republicans, why not just make it all but impossible for them to operate as their used to?
That absolutely sounds like a typical corporate structure to me. Except, not really. [DEL]Glad you’re probably getting a raise while I can look forward to getting taxed on money I never even see.[/DEL]
At the end of the day, Democrats (so far) have won the branding campaign on the bill. It’s opposed by 2/3 of those polled, and the cuts won’t come in time to help the 2018 elections. Corporations can afford to take the long-term view - low/middle-class voters generally don’t.
ETA: Apparently the ass-fucking for graduate students was removed from the final version.
Why do people continue to make claims along these lines? I thought I cleared this up in post #17. Withholding tables are being adjusted now. People will see their take-home pay grow next month or the month after that.
I believe most tax payers if they even realize that the cuts expire, are happy with a larger take home income now. I don’t know if the Republicans have a greater grasp of voter behavior or intelligence.
This is obvious nonsense; hiring people in and of itself obviously reduces, not increases, profits.
What increases profits is selling more goods and services (which may require hiring more employees and accepting the associated necessary evil of giving up a portion of the new income). Unfortunately, the Pubbie tax scheme doesn’t provide the necessary conditions (significantly increased after-tax income for lower-to-middle class people who actually spend most of each marginal dollar) for generating demand.
Until they figure out that their taxes will end up increasing to pay for the benefits that our Pubbie overlords gave to the wealthy, in addition to the 1.5T extra that gets pasted on to the national debt.
Buy then current administration will be at a golf course country club, counting their money.
By how much? When Obama passed tax cuts that reduced taxes on wages even more than this one does, people did not notice. Some people even claimed that he had raised taxes. Most people will be getting something less than $500 a year back. So, we’re talking maybe $20 on a 2 week paycheck. The people who are expecting that this tax cut will benefit them will be very disappointed with the growth of their paycheck. Even more so, if they know what getting that $10 a week is actually costing them, and their children, both in the long run, when the debts that are being racked up come due, and also in the short run, with things like CHIP being defunded.
What’s your cite for “Most people will be getting something less than $500 a year back”?
To offer a different opinion, Forbes said this:
Well, start here. Scroll down to the $25,000. It says that they should expect to get about $369. Things could very well change, as that was while it was up in the air, but I am having trouble fiding something that actually compares what the savings are, if you have a better calculator, I’m all for it.
Then comeover here, and see that the majority of the people in the country make less than $31,000 a year. Many of those in the lower half of income are republican voters who voted for republicans because they promised lower taxes and better healthcare. They really are not getting either.
Even the “middle income” tax payers, assuming they really get the $900 (which will reduce over time until it is actually a hike within 10 years), that’s a whopping $17 a week.
Your contention is that these taxpayers are going to see these enormous savings, and bow down in thanks to the republican party for them. I don’t think so. The republican party was given enough rope to hang itself, and it showed its hand.
Anyone who votes republican based on economic concerns now knows that they are not the responsible ones in the room. Republicans will still get support for social issues, guns and god stuff, but anyone who actually works for a living will see the tax cut for what it really is.
Just a note, you need to be a little careful here. While it’s true that effective, not statutory, rates are what really matters, there isn’t a standardized methodology to compute effective tax rates across nations. As another data point, the CBO’s analysis on 2012 corporate tax rates (warning: PDF) showed that the G20 average was in the low 20% range, and that the U.S.’ effective corporate tax rate was meaningfully higher. In addition, you really should be talking about G20 at a minimum, since China and Mexico are part of the G20 but not part of G7/G8, and these countries matter significantly to the U.S.
That said, going to 21% statutory is likely a bit of a lowball regardless; I wouldn’t be surprised if the U.S. effective rate dropped into the mid-to-high teens as a result. In addition, the other G20 countries that have lower corporate tax rates tend to have higher individual effective tax rates, especially at higher brackets of personal income, and this is not something that was incorporated into the recent bill.
The strategy of introducing temporary tax cuts, hoping to make them permanent down the road, worked well for “The Bush Tax Cuts.” There was still room to kick the can down the road in 2010 and run permanent deficits at that point. With the fiscal pressure continuing to mount yearly, I seriously question whether there is going to be enough road left to execute the same strategy in 2025. However, from a purely short-term, politically-selfish perspective, this probably doesn’t matter since people will be blaming the office holders of 2025 for the fiscal problems, not the current politicians.