The tax bill disaster

 How the tax bill would gut affordable housing

Huffington Post - The big winners in the GOP bill that the Senate passed early Saturday morning are corporations and the wealthy. Trump himself - a self-proclaimed billionaire - stands to gain millions through the elimination of certain taxes (though we don’t know exactly how much because Trump won’t release his tax returns). Far from being a middle-class tax cut, the measure is a massive corporate giveaway, a bill that recycles decades of Republican ideology on trickle-down economics and trusts that executives will hand over their new gains to average-income workers.

With the bill finally through the Senate - the House passed its tax bill two weeks earlier - the two chambers still have to work out their legislative differences in a conference committee before the tax rewrite becomes law. There’s a slim chance the House could adopt the Senate bill and send it to the president’s desk, but it’s more likely that negotiators will merge the two versions. Both chambers need to pass the same measure for the bill to become law.

The richest 20 percent of households reap 90 percent of the benefit of the tax cuts over that time period, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

... Overall, the legislation would cut the corporate tax rate from 35 to 20 percent, which all along has been the GOP’s priority all along. ... In addition to reducing corporate and individual tax rates across the board, the bill would simplify the tax code by getting rid of most deductions, which businesses and individuals use to reduce the amount of their income subject to taxation.

Axing deductions for state and local taxes, for instance, while increasing the value of a fixed “standard deduction,” would result in far fewer households finding it worthwhile to deduct the amount they spend on mortgage interest. A study commission by the National Association of Realtors earlier this year said the proposal would reduce home values by 10 percent (which could be a good thing for people who don’t already own homes).

While fewer deductions makes for a simpler tax code, the bill would also create a complicated new deduction for certain businesses that aren’t taxed as corporations. Determining which firms have the kind of “qualified business income” eligible for the deduction will require many pages of new IRS regulation, though the bill explicitly excludes high-income service providers like accountants, lawyers and investment managers.

... Another provision in the manager’s amendment, inserted by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), would exempt schools that don’t take federal funds, such as the conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan, from a new tax on college and university endowments. The measure seems designed less to raise money than to poke educated liberals in the eye. Toomey’s office also did not respond to a request for comment.

NY Times Editorial - The bill is expected to add more than $1.4 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade, a debt that will be paid by the poor and middle class in future tax increases and spending cuts to Medicare, Social Security and other government programs. Its modest tax cuts for the middle class disappear after eight years. And up to 13 million people stand to lose their health insurance because the bill makes a big change to the Affordable Care Act.

Yet Republicans somehow found a way to give a giant and permanent tax cut to corporations like Apple, General Electric and Goldman Sachs, saving those businesses tens of billions of dollars. Newsletter Sign Up

...For his part, Mr. Trump has repeatedly asserted with a straight face that the tax bill would hurt him. In fact, it will give him and his family a windfall. That’s because the Senate bill will provide a generous tax break for income that people earn through limited liability corporations, partnerships and other so-called pass-through businesses that do not pay taxes before passing on profits to owners. Under the Senate bill, the president will be able to claim a 23 percent deduction on profits he earns through his more than 500 pass-through businesses.

You can expect the lies to become even more brazen as Republicans seek to defend this terrible bill. But no amount of prevarication can change the fact that Congress and Mr. Trump are giving a giant gift to their donors and sticking the rest of the country with the tab.

The Hill - Senate Republicans have approved the repeal of ObamaCare’s individual mandate as part of their tax-cut bill, a major step toward ending an unpopular part of the health-care law.

Many experts and health-care groups warn that repeal will destabilize ObamaCare markets, leading to premium increases or insurers simply dropping out of certain areas. Without a financial penalty under the mandate for lacking health coverage, there is less incentive for healthy people to sign up and balance out the costs of the sick.

Some experts counter that the effects will not be as severe as others say, given that there are doubts the mandate had a strong effect on people to begin with.