How the GOP won the tax game and what you get in return

Only last Friday, when the legislation came out of conference committee and was no longer subject to amendment — and when decisive majorities of House and Senate Republicans had publicly committed to vote for the legislation — did experts and journalists begin to fully catch up with its defects.

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This full-speed-ahead strategy simultaneously constrained the ability of the press to explore the special interest provisions buried in the legislation.

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Not only are many senators direct beneficiaries of the legislation, but 15 of the top 20 Senate recipients of contributions from the real estate industry are Republicans.

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Two days before Congress gave final approval, a group of 13 tax law experts released the most incisive critique of the tax bill to date, a 30-page document called “The Games They Will Play: An Update on the Conference Committee Tax Bill.”

The primary authors of the report — Ari Glogower, David Kamin, Rebecca Kysar, and Darien Shanske — describe the legislation as “a substantial blow to the basic integrity of the income tax” that will “advantage the well-advised in ways that are both deliberate and inadvertent.”

  NYT

I think the bottom line is you should turn yourself into a corporation. I'm pretty sure this can be done

The corporate rate reduction is permanent, for individuals only temporary.

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Mitchell Kane, a law professor at N.Y.U., wrote in response that the bill will

create new incentives to shift tangible assets (and jobs) abroad. Given President Trump’s relentless message about U.S. jobs, it is incomprehensible to me that we are about to pass something that has this effect without any kind of meaningful discussion of the issue.

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In the first year, 2018, the changed inflation rate raises a relatively modest $31.5 billion but it grows every year, reaching $37 billion in 2027. “To be sure,” Hemel wrote, “this affects everyone to some degree, but most of the burden is paid for by families in the bottom four quintiles.”

What may prove even more significant is that the shift to chained CPI — a less generous, slower-growing measure of inflation than the one currently in use — would not only result in a tax increase over time, it would set a precedent for Republicans who would like to use the same method to pare back so-called entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. It is, in effect, a backdoor method of reducing benefits for the elderly and the disadvantaged without public scrutiny or debate.

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A recent story disclosed that a provision inserted at the last minute into the bill stands to lower taxes on the income of 14 Republican Senators.

And what do you get for all this?

Restriction on state and C local tax deduction — consciously vindictive imposition of double taxation on citizens of certain Democratic states; corporations and pass through businesses, the darlings of the Republicans, still get to deduct those very same taxes in full.

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Expanding the standard deduction but financing the cost of so doing by repealing the personal exemptions is a bit of a bait and switch maneuver. Some people might be worse off.

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Deduction for extraordinary medical expenses — retention of this deduction did not even get the five-year sunset window applied to all the other individual tax provisions, two years only.

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In a bill in which 100s of billions of dollars were sloshing around to provide steep tax cuts for already wealthy and highly prosperous corporations and pass through businesses, the Republicans could only find the will to raise the refundable portion of the child care tax credit from $1000 to $1400. Rubio wanted it to be raised to $2000 and his Republican brethren refused to even meet him halfway.

But he voted for it, didn't he?

So how soon will you change your party affiliation from Republican?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

P.S.
That carried interest provision that Trump benefits from and famously said he'd end while he was campaining? Not gone.