fractalmstr, I don’t think we’re looking at the same plans. The one I see gives the tax breaks to people who have an extremely high income, they are not going to be affected by losing many deductions. I see it being paid by the upper middle class workers and middle class people who have large deductions they will lose.
And the wanna-be wealthy isn’t people who live above their means, but the people who are doing well, just not well enough to actually be wealthy.
Ah well, we’ll see what they end up with at the end. I guess we can only hope the corporations raking in a windfall will actually expand and not put the greater profits towards CEO profits and stock buybacks. There sounds like nothing to make them pay higher wages nor expand, it’s all based upon hope.
I live in NYC, house is valued at around $525,000. We pay about $4,300 in property taxes, plus state and city taxes. If the threshold is $260,000, we will see our taxes raised.
But our kids are grown, we have the remaining tuition covered, so thankfully, we don’t care. I would prefer to pay more at this stage in life if only younger families who are trying to do their best could get a break. But of course that never happens. The kleptocrat class wants it all.
^ Quite possibly, busdriver. Admittedly, I haven’t taken a thorough look at the new tax changes, mostly because I know it’s all written in beach sand at the moment. I was just commenting on the one specific issue CF brought up.
I did notice though that the upper-middle class seems to be a major target for tax increases.
When I lived in New Jersey my property taxes (when I left) were in the high $20k range. I thought it was almost worth it because of the good schools and the property taxes were deductible. I took a good look at my tax returns and realized due to AMT most of those property taxes were NOT deductible anyway! This new tax plan eliminates the AMT, which is huge. It was never done in the past because our lawmakers couldn’t figure out how to replace the vast amount of tax revenue generated by the AMT. I guess that no longer matters. In 2016, for us, a married couple with no dependents and not blind or disabled, standard deduction was $12,600 and 2 exemptions of $4050 totalled $20,700. New proposed standard deduction with no exemptions is $24,400, so that will be a bit higher. I like the idea of doubling the estate tax exemption, but eliminating it entirely (from $11mm) obviously only benefits the progeny of the very rich.
What gets me are the highest two brackets, 35% and 39.6% - in reality these are getting “lower” because the AMT is gone. Just about everyone in those brackets had paid the AMT.
Why is it curious that a politician will want to tax his/her opponents to pay for tax cuts for his/her supporters (plutocrat-level wealthy, big business, inheritors)?
The plutocrat-level wealthy mostly has not been paying those rates anyway, since much more of their income comes from capital, where they can take advantage of much lower tax rates for such things as long term capital gains and dividends, as well as the greater flexibility of capital in causing or avoiding taxable events (e.g. when to sell stock for a capital gain or loss).
@ucbalumnus we are currently in the 33% bracket, which is moving to 35% and we are neither wealthy or plutocrats. I think quite a few posters fall in that range. Our income is strictly W-2, so no big breaks for us.
Funny, the majorly of upper middle class I know didn’t vote for anyone on the ballot…a few voted reluctantly for one or the other that were running, but none enthusiastically.
Yes, you are in the class of taxpayers whose taxes are likely to go up to pay for tax cuts for the plutocrats, big business, and inheritances. Those with high income mostly from labor (which seems to describe a lot of people on these forums) are the most attractive tax targets, since they have income to tax that is not as easily shielded like capital income.
“Ah well, we’ll see what they end up with at the end. I guess we can only hope the corporations raking in a windfall will actually expand and not put the greater profits towards CEO profits and stock buybacks. There sounds like nothing to make them pay higher wages nor expand, it’s all based upon hope.”
One only has to look back at the last time corporations were allowed to bring all their money stashed out of the country (Bush tax cuts) to see what they did with the money. Hint - it wasn’t to increase wages or business expansion. They said that was what they were going to do but they lied.
Businesses held cash during the recession years, didn’t use it to increase wages which have been stagnant forever. Instead, jobs were cut, dividends rose, and investment (at least at my employer) went down.
I expect to see more dividends paid and no wage/salary increases by my employer yet again.
They are currently paying 22%.
Our property taxes total around $6500. We also pay a load of sales tax -over 10% on everything but food. Excise taxes on vehicles went up in 2017.
I’ll pay off older Ds student loans in December instead of letting her pay them off over the next 5 years.
It clearly shows that the loss of deducting state and local income taxes will affect blue states far more than red ones. Do they figure that it doesn’t matter, since the state is already blue?
If those seats are in jeopardy because of this issue, it could flip the house to D after the 2018 elections. I wonder who those 9 reps are…
I know a lot of people who SAY they didn’t vote for anyone on the ballot, or SAY they didn’t vote or SAY they voted for a non-D/R candidate. But when you talk with them further about it, they admit they voted for the current administration. Some of them regret it; others would vote the same way again. I don’t share political views with most of my friends/family.
