I keep getting the urge to watch the movie Idiocracy again.
Maybe a sudden desire to view Luke Wilson’s finest performance?
Or not. 
They’re not voting because they don’t have the votes and have to rewrite the bill. They plan to rewrite it overnight and vote on it tomorrow.
I’m a software engineer. I write programs. I try my best to write correct code, and every time I start to test my code I think it’s correct and once I get the typos out, it’ll run perfectly. But it never does, because there are bugs.
There are bugs in 500 pages of legislation, too. Legislators aren’t any better at avoiding bugs than programmers are. That’s why Congress has hearings-- so that different people can point out the bugs. If this legislation is passed without hearings and without vetting, there will be hugely expensive bugs, and tax professionals paid $2000 an hour will find them.
For example, here is a long and technical post claiming that with the bill as written, many many people with incomes less than $300,000 a year ($600,000 for married couples filing jointly) will be able to claim an extra 17.4% deduction.
https://medium.com/whatever-source-derived/is-there-a-trillion-dollar-hole-in-the-senate-tax-plan-3975b763ad3d
Sloppy, rushed, slapdash tax legislation is guaranteed to produce loopholes.
@“Cardinal Fang” lol I posted that article earlier. This thread is so active it’s hard to keep up.
So what IS my daughter if she is not a university school employee… but gets a $1200 a year stipend…and a $25,000 tuition waiver…which will be $50,000 in two years?
She is not entitled to any school benefits like medical. Seems to me if she were an employee, they would have to offer this as a benefit…right?
And/or a lot of confusion because taxpayers, tax preparers, and the IRS cannot figure out how exactly to interpret something that is not precisely stated as intended.
Is she “engaged in teaching or research activities”? That is the real thing. And no, benefits don’t matter. My kid had PhD program offers from schools with no medical (which she did not even seriously consider – one school offered them as a sweetener for her, but she’d already decided not to attend there), and at those schools she would have been a teaching assistant with a stipend and a tuition waiver (that would be taxed).
Is she doing research specifically for the u which is not for her own pursuits? Helping someone else with THEIR research not related to her own? If not, it doesn’t seem like the wording applies to her (which would be good 
)
As for employees getting benefits, I worked as an adjunct without benefits for years. I only get them now because we are part of the union at current school.
I can’t believe that the response to the bill exploding the deficit by $1.5 trillion (or $2.5) is to install “triggers” that would increase taxes if growth is slower than expected. Anyone who has taken econ 101 should realize that increasing taxes while growth slows is a prescription for recession… or worse.
Yes, upthread I called it a #DeathSpiral. Justin Wolfers called it “Opposite Day”
I wouldn’t mind if they couldn’t spell macroeconomics if they know what it meant.
We need a calm, principled journalist to interview the GOP on this and calmly ask until he gets an answer. “Are you stupid or lying?”
Cause it is one or the other.
I thought the triggers were ruled out by the parliamentarian.
Also, predicted upthread, C Corporations for all. Well, I predicted for CEO’s
The next business best-seller, “The C Corporation next door.”
I’ve been thinking (not too seriously) about turning myself into a C corporation. Corporations are people, so why shouldn’t people be corporations?
This is the latest per NYT:
“Lawmakers are now considering alternatives, including reinstating the alternative minimum tax on some corporations and wealthy individuals, and raising the corporate rate above 20 percent after some number of years. A final vote on the bill is expected on Friday after a series of amendments are considered.”
Oy. The tax code will be sooooo simplified after that bill passes, ROFL!!!
Yes the triggers were ruled out.
“Lawmakers are now considering alternatives, including reinstating the alternative minimum tax on some corporations
and wealthy individuals, and raising the corporate rate above 20 percent after some number of years.”
Dartboard O’ Legislation.
If they put the corporate rate at around 28%, it would be close to revenue neutral on the corporate side.
Not likely to happen, given the apparent goal.
From the director of OMB during the George W Bush presidency:
Sure, they will raise corporate taxes later. Wink, wink.
A nice NYT visualization of everything that will be automatically cut if this bill passes:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/29/upshot/paygo-medicare-cuts-tax-bill.html
Just a few:
$25 billion from Medicare
$1.5 billion from National Flood Insurance
$900 billion from HHS’s Prevention and Public Health Fund
$1.4 billion from the Department of Education’s Rehabilitation Fund