Law profs come up with 34 pages of ways to game GOP tax scam

Slate - Because they were rushed through Congress at lightning speed and with barely more editing than your average blog post, the Republican tax bills are turning out to be full of kinks. Some of these mistakes—like the $289 billion tax hike on corporations senators accidentally wrote into their law at the last minute—have been widely covered. But many others are just being discovered. “The more you read, the more you go, ‘Holy crap, what’s this?’” Greg Jenner, a former top tax official in George W. Bush’s Treasury Department, told Politico this week. “We will be dealing with unintended consequences for months to come because the bill is moving too fast.”

Today, a group of 13 tax law professors and lawyers, many of whom have been vocal opponents of the Republican plan, published a 34-page paper offering a taste of what those unintended consequences might be. You know how people have been joking about incorporating themselves ever since these tax bills started kicking around? That’s almost certainly going to be a thing. Investors may be able to shelter their investment profits by stuffing them into C-Corporations, which are in line for a low, 20 percent tax rate. Many individuals could save on their income taxes by gaming proposed tax breaks for passthrough businesses—firms like partnerships and LLCs that aren’t subject to the corporate rate. Baseball players will probably start separate companies to collect all of their endorsement and licensing royalties while saving on taxes. A law firm could split itself into multiple pieces in order to minimize its associates’ IRS bills.