Tax Reform
Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2017 9:06 amI'll read it in more detail (not that there is a lot of detail) but initial thoughts:
Standard deduction/itemized deductions - Good. Should also get rid of Charitable and Home Mortgage deduction, but politically will never happen.
Change in individual rates - Neutral, would move it to support if get rid of capital gains/dividend rates.
Enhanced Child Tax Credits - Strongly opposed, this is the type of garbage that needs to go from the tax code. Again it's about the only way to get the plebes money as most of em don't pay significant income tax so politically it's probably a good move to placate people to get the corporate tax cuts through.
Work, education and retirement. - I have absolutely no idea what they're planning. More than likely it will help those who do/can contribute to retirement but the lower 50% will still be f**k.
Other Provisions - have no idea what they are planning, but if they get rid of a bunch of useless tax credits that benefit very few, I'm good with it.
Death and Generation skipping taxes - bad, bad, bad as a social policy... I don't see how they can do this w/o removing the step up in basis on inheritance which means giant tax shift from the 1% to the lower classes (who currently get step up in basis and no estate tax because the exemption is 5.4mil).
Just to touch on the expensing of capital assets - we've defacto had that for quite some time (see section 179 deduction) for the vast majority of small business. - Excellent policy, though as tax rates decrease businesses are less likely to invest in capital.
For corporate reform, I'd rather see a dividend paid deduction combined with taxing dividends at regular tax rates to the recipients.
