Tax changes / proposals - discussion

Don’t think most dividends are taxed at the individual level now and capital gains has a different tax rate. Are they changing that?

Otherwise, yes the answer is ideological.

So, joe, explain to me: have do you reconcile the 35% top line federal rate with 25.9%, 14%, or less than 5%?

Good prices on TaxCut (pun pun pun!):

Since both houses’ bills are doubling the standard deduction, I need to figure out if I should prepay my mortgage for next year.

Possible bad news for MLP investments in the Senate version.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-28/senate-tax-bill-sets-a-trapdoor-for-mlps

[quote=“meed18, post:419, topic:1661, full:true”]
From the GAO report:
“In each year from 2006 to 2012, at least two-thirds of all active corporations had no federal income tax liability.”

Two-thirds of all corps, not two-thirds of profitable corps.[/quote]

My reference was to the original study prepared for the Senate in 2008, where the GAO reported that two thirds of both American and foreign corporations doing business in the United States ended up avoiding all income tax obligations to the federal government despite corporate sales totaling $2.5 trillion.

The GAO report revealed that each year from 1998 to 2005, 66% of U.S. domestic corporations paid no federal income taxes to the federal government.

By the time the updated report that you cited was published, corporate America was so much more proficient at hiding their profits, the technical metric “profitable” became a meaningless joke, and the GAO replaced it with the metric “active”, which more accurately represented reality. The results remain the same.

I have no need to lie.

So Zaos, how do you reconcile asking such an insipidly redundant question ?

[quote=“xerty, post:425, topic:1661, full:true”]
Possible bad news for MLP investments in the Senate version.[/quote]

Ah, there are land mines o’plenty !

Don’t be an ass.

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Ah, so the “new” report is worthless, but the “old” report is gold. Got it. I should have said, why do you feel you have to provide old and antiquated statistics. The statistics I cited (the more current and more accurate ones - regardless of your mistaken description of them) are still valid in arguing your points. Why not just use them? I’m honestly curious. If it’s because you found the 2008 report and just ran with it rather than looking for something newer, that’s a legit answer. If that’s the case, just say so. I have no reason to doubt the 2008 report. It’s just old and things have changed, that’s all.

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[quote=“meed18, post:430, topic:1661, full:true”]
Ah, so the “new” report is worthless, but the “old” report is gold. Got it.[/quote]

Not what I posted, so you don’t “got it”.

The data is virtually identical, other than the name change of the metric. It’s just an update.

Nope. Actually, I previously had a hard copy, of the summary at least.

Nope, almost nothing has changed.

Your admonition would have more credibility if it had started with Zaos.

I merely responded in kind.

Zaos asked you a simple question to reconcile 2 points.

You responded with acrimony.

You’re detracting from your argument by being an ass.

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/sen-john-mccains-support-bolsters-gop-tax-hopes-as-senate-vote-nears-1512062349

A focal point for Republicans on Thursday will be an amendment to make child tax credits more generous.

The current Senate bill doubles an existing tax credit to $2,000 per child, which helps offset the loss of other tax breaks. Sens. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Mike Lee (R., Utah) are proposing expanding the child tax credit to more low-income families. They want to pay for the measure with a 22% corporate tax rate, higher than the 20% rate pushed by President Donald Trump.

Messrs. Rubio and Lee say the party needs to focus more on families and mitigate the cost of raising children. The pro-business wing of the party says the 20% corporate tax rate is crucial to the bill. Groups such as Americans for Tax Reform, led by antitax activist Grover Norquist, were rallying conservatives against the amendment.

“I don’t think it would pass,” said Sen. Richard Burr (R., N.C.), saying he saw no reason to move from a 20% corporate-tax rate.

“I don’t have a problem necessarily with 20%, but 22% would generate just as much growth,” Mr. Rubio said.

Ms. Collins said she planned to offer a slightly different amendment that would pay for expanding the tax credit for child and dependent care by changing the tax treatment for carried interest. Carried interest is the profit that some investment managers, such as at hedge funds, typically get. It is taxed at preferential long-term capital-gains rates, now 23.8%, compared with the current top ordinary income rate of 39.6%.

I don’t have children, but more support for raising children is a good thing. Personally I would prefer they kept the exemptions, but on the whole this credit makes sense.

Also - raising the corp tax rate by a couple points would also close the gap some critics have complained about: that pass through entities pay more than corporations. Even if corps were slightly more, it would make sense for corps to pay a few points more tax in exchange for the benefits, such as liability shield.

Ms. Collins, a Republican who is a crucial swing senator, indicated Thursday morning that her support for the bill would depend on passage of an amendment she has offered to include a deduction for property taxes up to $10,000, as well as an agreement she struck with GOP leaders to separately pass two health-care bills designed to stabilize the individual insurance market.

Those bills are aimed at offsetting the impact of repealing the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act, which says that most people must have health-care insurance or pay a penalty. Republicans added the mandate repeal to the tax bill because it reduces federal health-care spending and thus frees up money for deeper tax cuts.

Mandate repeal - why not. Sorry for these of you on the individual market that actually pays for coverage yourself. However, making the situation so shitty and sticky may incent later action.

[quote=“jerosen, post:433, topic:1661, full:true”]
Zaos asked you a simple question to reconcile 2 points.[/quote]

Uh Huh.

Rah Roh.

The Senate Parliamentarian just torpedoed the tax bill.

He told them the “trigger” mechanism that those senators who know the legislation will massively explode the federal debt demanded be included cannot be utilized under reconciliation. Now the only way they can make it work is to have the tax cuts AUTOMATICALLY reversed if the magical fairy dust doesn’t arrive.

Since tax rate cuts won’t stimulate the economy, won’t create jobs, won’t raise wages, but will create trillions in federal red ink, this isn’t going to go down well on Wall Street, at least to those who are paying attention.

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"Senate Republicans on Friday were confident that they had locked in enough votes to pass a sweeping tax bill later in the day. Wavering GOP senators offered their support and a holdout, worried it would add to the deficit, all but conceded defeat.’

https://www.wsj.com/articles/gop-tax-bill-picks-up-support-after-delay-over-deficit-fears-1512140345

There wasn’t really much doubt something would pass. They have enough egg on their faces from earlier in the year.

Shouldn’t focus too much on the details - reconciliation will put them up in the air again anyway.

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Quick summary of where the middle of the two bills may end up. YMMV on the remaining haggling, but it looks like this is likely to pass in some similar form at this point.

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Summary of the last minute haggling that got this through the Senate, and we might hope for in the reconciliation.

https://www.wsj.com/article_email/the-senates-tax-advance-1512173001-lMyQjAxMTA3NDAyMjgwNDIyWj/

And a side note on the economic growth impacts, the US should definitely pick up some foreign economic gains not included in the closed model due to increased competitiveness of the 20% corporate tax rate (uniform on both bill versions now) and the relative low tax on repatriating offshore profits to be put to use here.

By the way, De­moc­rats are flog­ging a Joint Com­mit­tee on Tax­a­tion re­port this week that the tax bill will in­crease the deficit even on a “dy­namic” ba­sis that con­sid­ers how in­di­vid­u­als will re­spond to in­cen­tives. But the real news is that even Joint Tax says the bill is pro-growth, adding 0.8% to the econ­omy, which is mirac­u­lous given its his­toric bi­ases. Joint Tax mod­els posit a rel­a­tively closed U.S. econ­omy rather than an open global cap­i­tal mar­ket that could fi­nance U.S. deficits.

Maybe this was covered but repatriating cash does not equal new jobs. Wasn’t this the argument made by R’s in the early 2000’s Tax Cuts.

1 Like