5 big problems the Senate Republican tax bill creates

Floridatexan wrote:
“I don’t understand why they didn’t just do a corporate tax cut plus a really attractive middle-class tax cut.”

EmeraldGhost wrote:

Floridatexan wrote:
“I don’t understand why they didn’t just do a corporate tax cut plus a really attractive middle-class tax cut.”

Because it would exceed the limitations imposed by the Byrd rule in order to pass a budget reconciliation bill by simple-majority vote.   They can't exceed more than a 1.5 trillion increase in the national debt over 10 years as determined by CBO static analysis ... or something like that.

Personally, I think if Republicans and Trump are insistent upon passing a tax bill at this time they should give corporate tax cuts half of what's planned in the current Senate bill ... and devote the rest to middle-class tax relief.  (but I am fully cognizant that nobody that matters cares or even listens to what I think .. not even Matt Gaetz who I just wrote to this morning about the Navarre Beach giveaway)

EmeraldGhost wrote: (but I am fully cognizant that nobody that matters cares or even listens to what I think .. not even Matt Gaetz who I just wrote to this morning about the Navarre Beach giveaway)

Column: Vote yes on GOP tax reform, and let the cash start trickling down!

It’s critically important that hardworking Americans everywhere come together and cheer on Republicans in Congress as they bravely, and Christianly, attempt to pass a tax reform bill that will help those most in need: the rich.

Like most regular, nonrich people, I have been SUPER PUMPED about tax reform for weeks, because I know the moment large corporations and wealthy individuals start paying less in taxes, their excess wealth juice will trickle down upon me and fill my dented tin cup with runoff largesse.

DOUSE ME IN YOUR SPARE DIAMONDS, O MIGHTY UPPER CRUSTERS!

All that stands between us and a veritable waterfall of prosperity are the dippy libs who claim that lower- and middle-income families will eventually see their taxes increase. And what do they base that claim on? Numbers. Stupid, stupid numbers.

According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a group I don’t think exists because I don’t want it to, 50 percent of taxpayers will be paying more in taxes by 2027. That’s because Republicans are wisely making tax cuts for big businesses permanent and then paying for that by letting tax cuts for human beings who don’t bathe in money expire. (Republican lawmakers are always right and moral — I know because they say so — and I’m sure this is exactly how Jesus would help the poor if his saviorship had been reliant on wealthy donors.)

The Joint Committee on Taxation, which I also choose to believe is fake, reported that by 2027, most Americans making $75,000 a year or less would see a tax increase, while those making $100,000 or more a year would continue paying less in taxes.

I get how that might sound bad, but I assure you it’s not. None of these so-called “expert analyses” takes into account what everyone at my Ronald Reagan Fan Fiction Club has been saying for years: If you cut taxes on the wealthy, they will create more jobs, and stimulate the economy and money will trickle down the ladder to all the rest of us.

It has happened time and time again throughout revisionist economic history, and I have no reason to doubt this time will be any different in my imagination.

Soon corporations could see their tax rates cut from 35 percent to 20 percent, meaning a good portion of that 15 percent that corporations save would come directly to us, because corporations are people and the Bible says people should care for other people. You don’t have to be an economist to see how smoothly this is all going to work.

I’ve already started daydreaming about how the money will be delivered. An airdrop would be fun, though I worry cash might get lost to the wind or to pesky birds feathering their nests with $100 bills. Maybe the wealthy will drive their luxury vehicles down residential streets and fire stacks of money from modified T-shirt cannons. What I wouldn’t give to get shot in the face with a thick stack of 20s!

It is possible the tax plan’s repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate will cause 13 million people to lose health coverage, but only a pessimist would see that as a negative. Without health insurance, those people won’t last long, and with 13 million fewer people around, there will be more of that trickle-down money for the rest of us.

I know this whole thing already sounds amazing, but there’s more. Money that corporations and their wealthy owners and executives don’t just hand over to us will be spent, I’m told, on the destruction of robots and other manufacturing machinery that have eliminated good-paying American jobs.

Granted the gift of tax cuts, the rich will immediately see to it that more people have jobs on factory production lines and in coal mines, eschewing efficient automation because that’s definitely a thing wise business people do when given more money.

We’ll see an employment explosion, because high tax rates have been holding our economy back. The dishonest people who follow what’s actually happening with our economy will tell you corporate earnings have already been strong and the stock market has been hitting record highs, but you can’t believe people who dabble in facts.

The ones who know what they’re talking about are the politicians extolling the greatness of this new tax reform plan, and I know that’s true because wealthy business people gave those politicians tons of money. Would a wealthy business person give money to someone who isn’t smart? Heck no! That would be ridiculous.

So please join me in rooting and praying for the Republicans fighting so hard to help those above us who have suffered under the yoke of a tax rate that discourages them from trickling down their riches.

There will be no trickle until the comfortable lives of the comfortably wealthy are made more comfortable. Then, and only then, can they comfort us while still affording yachts.

As it says in the Bible, in the first letter of St. Reagan to the Gulliblations: “Whatsoever you do to the most well-off of my people, so they shall do unto you. Unless they just can’t swing it this quarter.”

zsomething wrote:This fella's got things figured out.

Column: Vote yes on GOP tax reform, and let the cash start trickling down!

It’s critically important that hardworking Americans everywhere come together and cheer on Republicans in Congress as they bravely, and Christianly, attempt to pass a tax reform bill that will help those most in need: the rich.

Like most regular, nonrich people, I have been SUPER PUMPED about tax reform for weeks, because I know the moment large corporations and wealthy individuals start paying less in taxes, their excess wealth juice will trickle down upon me and fill my dented tin cup with runoff largesse.

DOUSE ME IN YOUR SPARE DIAMONDS, O MIGHTY UPPER CRUSTERS!

All that stands between us and a veritable waterfall of prosperity are the dippy libs who claim that lower- and middle-income families will eventually see their taxes increase. And what do they base that claim on? Numbers. Stupid, stupid numbers.

According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a group I don’t think exists because I don’t want it to, 50 percent of taxpayers will be paying more in taxes by 2027. That’s because Republicans are wisely making tax cuts for big businesses permanent and then paying for that by letting tax cuts for human beings who don’t bathe in money expire. (Republican lawmakers are always right and moral — I know because they say so — and I’m sure this is exactly how Jesus would help the poor if his saviorship had been reliant on wealthy donors.)

The Joint Committee on Taxation, which I also choose to believe is fake, reported that by 2027, most Americans making $75,000 a year or less would see a tax increase, while those making $100,000 or more a year would continue paying less in taxes.

I get how that might sound bad, but I assure you it’s not. None of these so-called “expert analyses” takes into account what everyone at my Ronald Reagan Fan Fiction Club has been saying for years: If you cut taxes on the wealthy, they will create more jobs, and stimulate the economy and money will trickle down the ladder to all the rest of us.

It has happened time and time again throughout revisionist economic history, and I have no reason to doubt this time will be any different in my imagination.

Soon corporations could see their tax rates cut from 35 percent to 20 percent, meaning a good portion of that 15 percent that corporations save would come directly to us, because corporations are people and the Bible says people should care for other people. You don’t have to be an economist to see how smoothly this is all going to work.

I’ve already started daydreaming about how the money will be delivered. An airdrop would be fun, though I worry cash might get lost to the wind or to pesky birds feathering their nests with $100 bills. Maybe the wealthy will drive their luxury vehicles down residential streets and fire stacks of money from modified T-shirt cannons. What I wouldn’t give to get shot in the face with a thick stack of 20s!

It is possible the tax plan’s repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate will cause 13 million people to lose health coverage, but only a pessimist would see that as a negative. Without health insurance, those people won’t last long, and with 13 million fewer people around, there will be more of that trickle-down money for the rest of us.

I know this whole thing already sounds amazing, but there’s more. Money that corporations and their wealthy owners and executives don’t just hand over to us will be spent, I’m told, on the destruction of robots and other manufacturing machinery that have eliminated good-paying American jobs.

Granted the gift of tax cuts, the rich will immediately see to it that more people have jobs on factory production lines and in coal mines, eschewing efficient automation because that’s definitely a thing wise business people do when given more money.

We’ll see an employment explosion, because high tax rates have been holding our economy back. The dishonest people who follow what’s actually happening with our economy will tell you corporate earnings have already been strong and the stock market has been hitting record highs, but you can’t believe people who dabble in facts.

The ones who know what they’re talking about are the politicians extolling the greatness of this new tax reform plan, and I know that’s true because wealthy business people gave those politicians tons of money. Would a wealthy business person give money to someone who isn’t smart? Heck no! That would be ridiculous.

So please join me in rooting and praying for the Republicans fighting so hard to help those above us who have suffered under the yoke of a tax rate that discourages them from trickling down their riches.

There will be no trickle until the comfortable lives of the comfortably wealthy are made more comfortable. Then, and only then, can they comfort us while still affording yachts.

As it says in the Bible, in the first letter of St. Reagan to the Gulliblations: “Whatsoever you do to the most well-off of my people, so they shall do unto you. Unless they just can’t swing it this quarter.”

I’m a Depression historian. The GOP tax bill is straight out of 1929.
Republicans are again sprinting toward an economic cliff.

...

Yet the plain fact that the trickle-down approach has never worked leaves Republicans unfazed. The GOP has been singing from the Market-is-God hymnal for well over a century, telling us that deregulation, tax cuts for the rich, and the concentration of ever more wealth in the bloated accounts of the richest people will result in prosperity for the rest of us. The party is now trying to pass a scam that throws a few crumbs to the middle class (temporarily — millions of middle-class Americans will soon see a tax hike if the bill is enacted) while heaping benefits on the super-rich, multiplying the national debt and endangering the American economy.

As a historian of the Great Depression, I can say: I’ve seen this show before.

In 1926, Calvin Coolidge’s treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, one of the world’s richest men, pushed through a massive tax cut that would substantially contribute to the causes of the Great Depression. Republican Sen. George Norris of Nebraska said that Mellon himself would reap from the tax bill “a larger personal reduction [in taxes] than the aggregate of practically all the taxpayers in the state of Nebraska.” The same is true now of Donald Trump, the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson and other fabulously rich people.

During the 1920s, Republicans almost literally worshiped business. “The business of America,” Coolidge proclaimed, “is business.” Coolidge also remarked that, “The man who builds a factory builds a temple,” and “the man who works there worships there.” That faith in the Market as God has been the Republican religion ever since. A few months after he became president in 1981, Ronald Reagan praised Coolidge for cutting “taxes four times” and said “we had probably the greatest growth in prosperity that we’ve ever known.” Reagan said nothing about what happened to “Coolidge Prosperity” a few months after he left office.

In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt called for “bold, persistent experimentation” and said: “It is common sense to take a method and try it; if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” The contrasting position of Republicans then and now is: Take the method and try it. If it fails, deny its failure and try it again. And again. And again.

When Bill Clinton proposed a modest increase in the top marginal tax rate in his 1993 budget, every Republican voted against it. Trickle-down economists proclaimed that it would lead to economic disaster. But the tax increase on the wealthy was followed by one of the greatest periods of prosperity in American history and resulted in a budget surplus. When the Republicans came back into power in 2001, the administration of George W. Bush pushed the opposite policies, which had invariably produced calamity in the past. Predictably, that happened again in 2008.

Just how disastrous would the proposed reincarnation of the failed Republican trickle-down policies of the past be for the American people and the future of the nation? A few ways:

Repealing the estate tax, or, as Republicans have dubbed it, the “death tax.” But the estate tax is not a tax on the dead; it is a tax on their heirs. Repeal would reverse an important aspect of the American Revolution and establish an American hereditary aristocracy. If your estate is not above $11 million, your benefits from this portion of the GOP’s tax cut will be a nice round number: zero.

Eliminating deductions for state and local taxes. The GOP has called these deductions favoritism for people who live in high-tax states. In fact, ending deductibility of state and local taxes would tax income that has already been taxed away from a taxpayer. It is, quite simply, double taxation.

Repealing the Alternative Minimum Tax, which assures that wealthy people who hire accountants to find all the obscure ways to avoid taxes cannot escape taxation altogether. Repealing it would save Trump millions.

Extending the “pass-through” provision to noncorporate businesses, including some 500 entities Trump owns. It would allow the owners of these businesses to pay taxes at 25 percent, instead of 39.9 percent. This provision would allow Wall Street fund managers, among other very wealthy people, to pay a lower tax rate than many middle-class Americans pay.
Ending the deductibility of large medical expenses.

Taxing waived tuition for college students, ending deductibility for student loan payments, and even disallowing teachers from deducting what they spend on school supplies for their students.

Ending the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, which would cause 13 million Americans to lose health insurance and result in much higher premiums for those who do get insurance through the exchanges. The Congressional Budget Office has indicated that, if enacted, the Republican tax bill may force deep cuts in Medicare through a generally unknown budget rule that its deficits would trigger.


The analysis of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that people making less than $100,000 a year (approximately 80 percent of American households) will have their taxes increased while the millionaires and billionaires will make off like bandits.

In the 1920s, Republicans were in full control of the federal government and used that power to pursue their objective to “make the well-to-do prosperous.” It didn’t “leak through on those below.” In that decade, the mass-production American economy became dependent on mass consumption. For it to work, the masses need a sufficient share of the national income to be able to consume what is being produced.

Republican policies in the ’20s instead pushed to concentrate more of the income at the top. Nine decades later, Republicans are rushing to do it again — and they are sprinting toward an economic cliff. Another round of Government of the People, by the Republicans, for the super-rich will be catastrophic. The American people must call a halt before it’s too late.

RealLindaL wrote:

EmeraldGhost wrote: (but I am fully cognizant that nobody that matters cares or even listens to what I think .. not even Matt Gaetz who I just wrote to this morning about the Navarre Beach giveaway)

It's not a "giveaway."  It's merely changing the form of ownership of already private, perpetually renewable leaseholds -- which do no Santa Rosa County citizen any good except for taxes and tourism -- from leases to titles, to put Navarre Beach taxpayers on equal footing with mainland property owners. SRC citizens lose nothing.  They can't lose what they never had nor ever will.

Granted it's a shame the Santa Rosa County elected commissioners refused to sign onto the Preservation clause as Escambia County's BCC did for Pensacola Beach -- and hopefully Senator Nelson may remedy that somehow -- but even in its present form the bill does nothing whatsoever to change the existing conditions in that regard.  

The pass is an entirely separate matter that has nothing whatsoever to do with the main purpose of the bill, which is to facilitate conveyance of fee simple title to leaseholders who opt to take it.   It was some Congressional rep from a Southwestern state years back, when a similar bill had been intro'd by Jeff Miller, who decided to tack on an amendment preventing the re-cutting of the pass, that first stalled this effort.  A form of blackmail, almost, penalizing leaseholders for no valid reason.

It's a shame  because, again, one has nothing to do with the other, nor with who has title to the leaseholds.   The re-opening of that pass has been dreamed about ever since it first closed in 1965, and that effort always should stand or fail on its own merits (or lack of same, see USAF for one), and should never have gotten tangled up in consideration of a title bill.

If it's enacted, the GOP tax cut now working its way through Congress will be the start of a decades-long economic policy disaster unlike any other that has occurred in American history.

There's no economic justification whatsoever for a tax cut at this time. U.S. GDP is growing, unemployment is close to 4 percent (below what is commonly considered "full employment"), corporate profits are at record levels and stock markets are soaring. It makes no sense to add any federal government-induced stimulus to all this private sector-caused economic activity, let alone a tax cut as big as this one.

This is actually the ideal time for Washington to be doing the opposite. But by damning the economic torpedoes and moving full-speed ahead, House and Senate Republicans and the Trump White House are setting up the U.S. for the modern-day analog of the inflation-producing guns-and-butter economic policy of the Vietnam era. The GOP tax bill will increase the federal deficit by $2 trillion or more over the next decade (the official estimates of $1.5 trillion hide the real amount with a witches brew of gimmicks and outright lies) that, unless all the rules have changed, is virtually certain to result in inflation and much higher interest rates than would otherwise occur.

The GOP's insanity is compounded by its moving ahead without having any idea of what this policy will actually do to the economy. The debates in the Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees and on the House floor all took place before the Congressional Budget Office's analysis and, if it really exists, the constantly-promised-but-never-seen report from the Treasury on the economics of this tax bill.

Meanwhile, Congress has ignored other estimates like this one from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School showing that the tax bill won't do what the GOP is promising.

In other words, the GOP tax bill may be enacted without anyone who votes for it having any understanding of the damage it could do to the economy. They have wishes, hopes and prayers but in reality nothing beyond the economic equivalent of pagan superstition.

https://www.reuters.com/article/legal-us-otc-tax/unsung-losers-in-tax-reform-legislation-trial-lawyers-idUSKBN1DV5WP wrote:
... One group you haven’t heard from, although the House legislation takes direct aim at them, is trial lawyers. The House version of tax reform, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, includes a provision that bars contingency fee lawyers from deducting case-related expenses before cases are resolved. (Specifically, the provision says, “No deduction shall be allowed … for any expense paid or incurred in the course of the trade or business of practicing law, and resulting from a case for which the taxpayer is compensated primarily on a contingent basis, until such time as such contingency is resolved.”)

The latest Senate proposal includes the same provision, explaining in plain language that it “denies attorneys an otherwise-allowable deduction for litigation costs paid under arrangements that are primarily on a contingent fee basis until the contingency ends.” The Senate Finance Committee said the provision will save an estimated $500 million over 10 years.

As you know, plaintiffs lawyers can spend hundreds of thousands -- or even, in complex antitrust, securities or mass tort litigation, millions of dollars – working up cases that take years to be resolved. Other businesses, of course, are entitled to deduct business expenses. But assuming the House provision survives the legislative process intact, trial lawyers’ upfront costs to develop their cases aren’t considered business expenses. ....

EmeraldGhost wrote:

RealLindaL wrote:

EmeraldGhost wrote: (but I am fully cognizant that nobody that matters cares or even listens to what I think .. not even Matt Gaetz who I just wrote to this morning about the Navarre Beach giveaway)

It's not a "giveaway."  It's merely changing the form of ownership of already private, perpetually renewable leaseholds -- which do no Santa Rosa County citizen any good except for taxes and tourism -- from leases to titles, to put Navarre Beach taxpayers on equal footing with mainland property owners. SRC citizens lose nothing.  They can't lose what they never had nor ever will.

Granted it's a shame the Santa Rosa County elected commissioners refused to sign onto the Preservation clause as Escambia County's BCC did for Pensacola Beach -- and hopefully Senator Nelson may remedy that somehow -- but even in its present form the bill does nothing whatsoever to change the existing conditions in that regard.  

The pass is an entirely separate matter that has nothing whatsoever to do with the main purpose of the bill, which is to facilitate conveyance of fee simple title to leaseholders who opt to take it.   It was some Congressional rep from a Southwestern state years back, when a similar bill had been intro'd by Jeff Miller, who decided to tack on an amendment preventing the re-cutting of the pass, that first stalled this effort.  A form of blackmail, almost, penalizing leaseholders for no valid reason.

It's a shame  because, again, one has nothing to do with the other, nor with who has title to the leaseholds.   The re-opening of that pass has been dreamed about ever since it first closed in 1965, and that effort always should stand or fail on its own merits (or lack of same, see USAF for one), and should never have gotten tangled up in consideration of a title bill.

Well, we're off-topic here ... but let me just say I think this is really more about Navarre Beach than it is Pensacola Beach .. .and it's really not about property tax.  Personally, I believe some big-money investors/developers have cast their collective eye upon Navarre Beach in particular as a potential gold-mine.  And Matt Gaetz is their go-to guy to give them the figurative mineral rights.   It's really kind of virgin territory for development.  A juicy ripe plum to be picked.   So yes, I'm skeptical.  Highly skeptical.

A few questions for you.



1.  Will gulf/sound front leaseholders now "given" fee-simple title own their property down to the high-tide line?

2.  Do you think the value of properties will go up because once they become fee-simple title rather than a leasehold?

3.  Do you think real estate investment groups will begin buying up all of the individual properties they can in order to later convince (buy) local officials into allowing them to consolidate lots and rezone them for hotels, high-rises, and commercial?  Or consolidate lots to build gulf-front mega-mansions?

4.  What percentage of beach property owners do you think are not actual year-round Florida residents?  What percentage are investment/rental properties?  What percentage are owned by wealthy individual nonresident out-of-State persons?   What percentage are corporate/LLC owned?    What percentage are not homestead properties.   (you can add all those up together in one number if you like ... my impression, having lived on Navarre Beach for a year and being a frequent visitor there for five more is that number is probably over 90%)

5.  Since leaseholders knew the terms of the leases when they signed up for them, and the FL Supreme Court has ruled taxation of their improvements is allowable (something I disagreed with btw .. but so be it), how are they further harmed by not giving them fee-simple title?

6.  Conversely ... how do leaseholders benefit?  (they will still have to pay property tax on both the land and the improvements.)  And if they do benefit ... where is the compensation to the residents of Escambia & Santa Rosa County for giving them this benefit?    (the property belongs to the all of the residents of Escambia County, btw per the original land grant)


"The Pass" of course, is a separate (but related IMO) issue and I'll reserve discussion of that for the time being.