$1.5 Trillion GOP Tax Cut Thread

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Once these Republicans realize that Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare will be cut big, some of them will die or be bankrupt due to not having an affordable insurance, this 70% approval will come crushing down.

The Republican electorate is the most low information & dumb voter-base that there is. They will only come around when their wallets are badly hit.

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These massive tax cuts, coupled by a 1.5 Trillion Medicare & Medicaid cuts & with the end of the CSR payments is going to hit Trump bad.

How is he going to justify this? The economy will not improve (possibly may do worse), people will lose healthcare, some will die, deficits will go higher. In the Townhall Debate, you will see questions coming from people saying my child died due to a Medicaid cut or CSR Payments etc.

This is going to be brutal for Trump.

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If there is a big recession, it will be a problem with these tax cuts & will tie the hands of the next President & will probably make him fail. Deficits will cross 1-1.5T $ if the economy goes south & you can't raise corporate taxes from 20% because there will be monthly job losses & you can't push small businesses.

But you will require a massive stimulus & infra package to get the economy back in order. That will increase the deficit & debt by so much. And the GOP will keep hammering the Democrat. And the Democrat has to cut spending or raise taxes big to make up for that after stabilizing the economy.

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I don't know how the GOP can justify not giving people the SALT deduction which has been in the code for like a 100 years, almost since there was income tax.

One of the basic arguments will be to avoid double taxation. You are already paying state & local taxes, you should atleast be able to deduct that & not pay taxes on taxes already paid. The GOP argues about Death Tax for the Millionaire Estate Tax but would make people pay tax on tax.

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I don't know how the GOP can justify not giving people the SALT deduction which has been in the code for like a 100 years, almost since there was income tax.

One of the basic arguments will be to avoid double taxation. You are already paying state & local taxes, you should atleast be able to deduct that & not pay taxes on taxes already paid. The GOP argues about Death Tax for the Millionaire Estate Tax but would make people pay tax on tax.

I don't know how the Democrats can justify making people pay a medicare tax for dividends which has been exempt in the code for like a 50 years, almost since there was medicare.

One of the basic arguments will be to avoid double taxation. Corporations already pay a corporate tax for profits but now we are asking for investors tho receive these dividends after tax to pay another tax on top of that.

Irrelevant. Corporation is a separate legal entity & is paying income taxes. Dividend tax in not a new thing as a concept. While the corporation are paying taxes on it, the individual people aren't. In general, Capital gains & income from investments are taxed at fairly moderate levels. Anyways, we will disagree on this so...

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Not just Climate change, in every question, College educated Republicans are giving crazy answers. Totally weird, maybe all these crazy conservative organizations in colleges & Infowars is having some effect.

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The thing that shocks me is certain people here say how suburanties were a deadend for dems because once Trump is gone and the culture warrior stuff dies down they'll go back to the GOP but this almost guarantee the suburbs going dem as now they are going to get hit in the pocketbook by Trump/GOP as well

It's bewildering how they seem to be almost trying to foster a realignment along the lines of the 2016 presidential election.

It would be easy for the suburban swing to the Democrats to have just been a fluke owing to a uniquely positioned Republican candidate. But the Republicans in elections this year have been running on the sort of culture war and anti-immigrant policies that offend suburbanites, and now Republicans in Congress seem dead-set on passing a tax bill that amounts to a redistribution of wealth toward the super-rich and business owners and away from the "merely" well-off and white collar salaried professionals.

I still do not understand why someone should pay a lower tax bill simply because they live in a state that has high state taxes and property taxes. IF you live in and vote for higher taxes in your state for a variety of reasons, more power to you, but I don't think you should then expect to get let off the hook at the federal level. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Also, anybody who is paying 10,000 dollars in property taxes is the type of person that represents the "rich" that the sanders wing wants to heavily tax.

Funny how they garner sympathy from the left when it is the GOP that targets their unfair tax deduction.  

Double taxation. Pretty simple & basic, which is why SALT was there since the tax code was there.

If you pay local taxes, you don't have to pay taxes on that local tax again at the federal level. Why should you pay tax twice? Most of the so-called High tax states are subsidizing most red states & get a fraction of the taxes they send anyways. It is totally crazy that Trump wants to apply a tax on local taxes now (which is what taking away the deduction is). And it is not some person paying 10K, there are many people earning less than 100-150K who will be effected by this bigtime.

And these voters didn't vote for the GOP to raise taxes on them. The GOP basically has the Congress due to these 3 dozen representatives from CA, NY, NJ, Illinois, etc. They would be toast without them in the house.

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Double taxation. Pretty simple & basic, which is why SALT was there since the tax code was there.

If you pay local taxes, you don't have to pay taxes on that local tax again at the federal level. Why should you pay tax twice? Most of the so-called High tax states are subsidizing most red states & get a fraction of the taxes they send anyways. It is totally crazy that Trump wants to apply a tax on local taxes now (which is what taking away the deduction is). And it is not some person paying 10K, there are many people earning less than 100-150K who will be effected by this bigtime.

And these voters didn't vote for the GOP to raise taxes on them. The GOP basically has the Congress due to these 3 dozen representatives from CA, NY, NJ, Illinois, etc. They would be toast without them in the house.

Why would not the reverse logic be true?  Namely is it not double taxation when state and local income taxes are being levied on income without removing what is being paid by federal taxes? By this logic should not all state and local income taxes first allow as deduction the amount paid in federal taxes?  I would also think by the same logic property taxes should also be deductible at the state and local income tax level as well.  And of course FICA and Obamacare taxes should also be deductible at the state and local level.  In theory the same should be true for FICA and Obamacare for federal taxes but I will grant that all of them are federal taxes so they can be additive and not seperate taxes that could lead to an argument of double taxation. 

Of course once property taxes are in the mix, then should not sales tax also be in the mix as well since just like property taxes, sales tax are not related to income.  I get the federal tax code allows people in no income tax states (like FL) to use sales tax instead for deductions.  But by the double taxation argument means that it should not that be additive and not in replace off.  Namely sales tax should always be deductible on federal taxes and maybe state and local taxes (I guess less of an argument there just like the FICA/Obamacare for federal taxes).

If we did that then while I would not agree with this system I would agree it is internally consistent.  What the GOP Senate plan is internally consistent on the basis that all taxes are separate and what one pays for one should not affect the other.

Sales Tax is something which is levied on most goods & there will be so many transactions, that it is totally impossible to even track it. Besides, it essentially adds to the price of goods, you get goods at a higher price. The key thing here is direct & indirect taxes. Indirect taxes go through private organizations & are levied on goods.

The concept here is Direct taxes which are levied directly by state & local bodies - Like property & Income taxes. Property taxes & income taxes should be deductible IMO. Both of them are a variation of direct taxes. But with property tax atleast one can argue. Income taxes are key basic direct tax levied on income.

Why on earth should one pay taxes on it a 2nd time at the state level? In general, by global standards, most of the direct taxes are levied at the federal level (Corporate, Personal Income taxes). The bulk of the tax revenue of direct taxes goes to the Federal level. Ideally, if you pay income tax X on your state, that X shouldn't be part of your taxable income. That is the reason SALT deduction has been there since the inception of the Tax code.

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Why can't they just do something smart like:

- Actually lower the tax rate and keep all deductions for those making $250,000 or less.
- Lower corporate tax rates to get them in line with the rest of the world but then close the loopholes so corporations actually have to pay the 20-25% tax rate.
- Eliminate the estate tax for the small farmers that can possibly get hit while raising it on wealthy estates.
-Jacking up taxes 20-30% for the top 1% and punishing hiding money in offshore accounts.

Everyone wins!

Bush already raised the eligibility for the Estate Tax. The rates & eligibility has been raised so many times. It is like 5-6M $ now. There are no "Small farmers". Besides there are like 80 odd farmers in total.

Deductions don't effect the top people because of AMT. AMT ensures that they can't benefit from those big-time & have to pay a certain share. Most of these are middle class deductions, sometimes preventing double taxation.

Cutting Corporate taxes was something I think is not a terrible deal. It is globally between 25-30% apart from some exceptions. So, a 25-30% won't be bade but it will add to the deficit & it is unlikely to bring growth as corporations are sitting on record profits.

I don't see much scope for tax reform. Obama proposed cutting the Corporate rate to 27-28% & remove all deductions which wouldn't add to the deficit. The GOP rejected it. That is the best case scenario for a conservative tax reform.

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I played around with my income tax plan calculator that I built based on the House and Senate plans and added in the feature to do calculations for Singles and Head of Household recently. One thing I noticed about the House and Senate plans is that both closes the gap on the marriage penalty for higher income taxpayers.  But it seems the Senate plan is much more aggressive on closing that gap than the House.  High income singles will get hit badly by this.  It seems the greatest net loser in the Senate tax plan, by far, is the high income single salaried taxpayer living in an ultra-high tax area, say, San Francisco or NYC.   Wow.  My wife tells me some of her single investment banking friends in NYC are very steamed by this plan.  I can see why.  I put in some numbers and nearly fell off my seat on how badly they will get hit.

Combine this with the Republican Party's "family values" rhetoric, and I can't help but wonder if there's a motive for this.

I think it is a bit more complex then that.  It is more about assortative mating at the higher income levels.  The current tax code actually make is neutral or even slightly advantageous for a doctor to marry a nurse but carries heavy punishments when a doctor marries a doctor.  The House and to much a bigger extent the Senate plans reduces or even eliminates this punishment.  This would be a non-issue 50 years ago but with the change in social norms and social expectations of women in professional world this is a relevant issue.  To some extent assortative mating at the top plus the rise of services in the economy are major drivers of household income inequity last couple of generations.  This marriage penalty in the tax code partially offset this trend.  Now if the Senate plan passes, with my total support, this economic constraint on assortative mating will be removed, as it should be.

You really believe this, or is it just trolling? I mean such a policy in my feeble old mind, is just so wrong on so many levels. It has that odor of eugenics about it for starters. But then again, such "power couples" may be too engaged in other endeavors to have much desire to be bogged down with rug rats. So maybe not. Anyway, just ugh, in my opinion. Meanwhile I am hooked up with a talented artist who makes next to no money. Maybe it is time to get married under the new tax code from hell!

Well, lets be clear what I am saying.   I am for taxes being the same for two people regardless or not they are married or not.  RIght now that is clearly not the case



What this set of tax proposals will reduce the marriage penalty for two high income couples.  My positions on eugenics is neutral and I want the government to hold the same position.  The current tax laws has a clear anti-eugenics bias toward the higher income bands.  A pro-eugenicists tax code would be to tax heavier for low income couple relative to if they filed as single and tax lower for high income married couples realtive to if they filed as single.  IF that were the case I would be equally opposed to that setup just like I am opposed this differential tax treatment today.   

It is probably impossible mathematically to come up with a progressive taxation code which will be stay the same for singles, married couples filing jointly & separately at all levels.

I think in pre-WW II, married couples had to file single tax returns. You are correct that, at a similar income, married couples can pay at a higher rate than single ones. Ideally, tax policies must be neutral to marriage choices & shouldn't incentive such behavior unless there is threat of cataclysm or any such activity (Ex - Carbon tax to disincentive Global Warming & to ensure Fossil Fuels bear social & economic indirect cost).

Ofcourse, I totally disagree on the idea of taking exemptions from middle class like SALT which prevents double taxation & has been there since the inception of the code (AMT already ensures many high earners pay a fair share). Likewise, healthcare is a right in most countries & medical expenses should be tax free. However, those are ideological differences. Ideally, the tax code shouldn't interfere into marriage related issues.

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Democrats need to weed out scum like Warner who can't even guarantee a 2/3rd vote while making massive changes to Social Security & Medicare. So much for bipartisanship.

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SenSanders
Maybe I missed it, but I don't remember the need to provide tax breaks to wealthy hedge fund managers in the Virgin Islands being one of our nation's pressing crises. Yet that's exactly what Section 14504 of the GOP bill does.

Apparently it is not even all Wealthy Hedge Fund managers in Virgin Islands but there also the bill picks & chooses. SWAMP at work !

Orin Hatch should give the name of the lobbyist who inserted the provision for which select few Hedge Fund Managers !

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A number of my left-wing friends have said, "as much as it sucks that it's a corporate give away, I desperately need to keep some more money." Most of my friends makes between $35k and $55k (myself included). What's the best argument to use to encourage my friends not to support this tax plan?

Massive deficit increase and that their taxes will go up permanently in 3-4 years with this plan so short term marginal gain for long term pain.

Exactly I agree. But it's just like--so hard to tell someone not to like extra money in their pockets. That's part of why this bill is so damn toxic.

Here is how the Deficit will hurt - It will cause not just huge cuts to SS, Medicare or Medicaid which your friends will someday depend on (& some of their family members do) but it will hurt the general fiscal position. Servicing the debt is a problem when Interest rates rise from their historic low. Every year more & more $ will go into Interest leaving fewer amount left. The biggest purchaser or T-Bills or US Govt. Bonds is probably China which means China will be financing this debt.

The Individual cuts are all temporary & expire in 2027. The plan has massive loopholes & giveways - From Private jets to tax haven companies in the Virgin Islands & the amendments have been written by the lobbyists. Ask your friends is it good to give 70-80% of the benefits to the Top 1% & give the remaining few to the middle class, give them some crumbs & they can be happy?

BTW - If they are from NY or CA or will settle there eventually, SALT exemption capped at 10,000 $ (even if that is final deduction) would mean they would lose money when they to the 75-100-125$ K odd income (Comfortable Middle Class).

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Bernie Sanders calls tax bill “class warfare” at Dayton event

The Vermont senator and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate called the tax bill “a moral outrage” and “class warfare,” saying that Republicans are “looting the federal government” to give tax breaks to people who don’t need them.

“The legislation passed last night gives incredibly large tax breaks to the very, very wealthy, it raises taxes on millions of middle-class families, it leaves 13 million more Americans without health insurance … and it raises the deficit by $1.4 trillion,” Sanders said. Sanders urged people to call their representatives and senators now to have an impact on how the final bill is presented to Trump in the coming weeks. Sanders argued the tax bill is part of a larger pattern where Trump campaigned on helping working families, but is now championing policies that will hurt them. “A year has come and gone since Mr. Trump won, and I think it is now clear to most Americans that Donald Trump was not telling the truth,” Sanders said.

The Ohio Republican Party called Sanders’ arguments about a struggling America “a socialist sales pitch.” “Ohio voters rejected the far-left, job-killing economic policies of Sanders and (Sherrod) Brown last year by overwhelmingly electing President Trump,” Ohio Republican Party Executive Director Rob Secaur said in a statement. “With the economy booming and tax reform on the horizon, Sanders and Brown are out of touch and out of luck in Ohio.”

http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/bernie-sanders-calls-tax-bill-class-warfare-dayton-event/9k3y73uCwwCxsPK8mtDw5J/

Democrats need to go out & educate people about the terrible tax bill so that people atleast make an informed choice.

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If their is truly one thing dems need to learn from Bernie (aside from the popular/smart progressive policies that is) is to use common sense/simple language when fighting the GOP and calling this bill "class warfare" on the middle class is a perfect example

I would also say in grassroots mobilization & speaking to people directly. Democrats need to engage their constituents.

Sanders is on a 3-day, four city "Protecting Working Families" tour with MoveOn.org and the "Not One Penny" coalition. "This legislation goes well beyond taxes," Sanders wrote in an email that was sent to supporters last Monday. "Mark my words. If passed, the Republicans will then rediscover the 'deficit crisis,' and push aggressively for massive cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education — higher education in particular — nutrition, affordable housing and more." "That is why I am going on the road this week to talk directly to working people," Sanders added.

But he stressed that the GOP won’t get away with it. While the system “thrives on” people falling asleep, he said, that’s the opposite of what is happening.  “We are winning the fight for the vision of the future of America,” he said, drawing applause. “Our vision, your vision, is gaining momentum all across this country.” “We are the vast majority of the American people,” he said. “Their ideas have very little support. So what our job is is to bring people together. Don’t let them divide us up by the color of our skin or where we were born or our religion. Let us stand together. Let us think big. Let us transform this country.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/12/02/bernie-sanders-takes-his-protecting-working-families-tour-road

He has already made this into a flight to protect SS, Medicare, Medicaid, Education programs which are all incredibly popular among Swing, conservative leaning voters as well.

I hope Warren, Booker, Harris, Merkley all go this route when also blasting the tax plan. Democrats need a massive grassroots mobilization to stop huge cuts to SS, Medicare & Medicaid.

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Jeff Merkley is only Democrat to get amendment in GOP tax reform bill

As Senate Republicans geared up to pass sweeping changing to the tax code early Saturday, senators offered a number of amendments aimed at making the bill better. Oregon's Jeff Merkley is the only Democrat to get one included in the final bill.

"Senate just passed my amendment to strike the terrible DeVos Tax Earmark – a handout for a wealthy, DeVos-funded private school that refuses to comply with federal non-discrimination laws," Merkley tweeted after the vote. "Like all these special interest giveaways, it never should have been in this #TaxScamBill."

http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/12/jeff_merkley_is_only_democrat.html