That's it. This is what The Prez and his Team have been working on for the past 98 days. Honestly, it looks like something I might have whipped out at 2am the night before a college paper topic outline was due. I give it a half hour effort, max.
In short, it's insulting. It seems at first glance to give a break to the middle class by increasing the Standard Deduction, but also seems to take away some possible deductions, too, most notably property TAX deductions. Property INTEREST deductions appear to be left intact. What will the middle-class bottom line look like? Probably either "revenue neutral" (Gubment speak for "no change") or maybe a slight tax cut, just enough to give the incumbent Congressman a good shot at re-election, which is all he cares about.
On the other side, corporations, notably including privately held corporations like Trump, Inc, will make out like absolute bandits! It will result in tax cuts, on paper at least, to small businesses like mine, but it will be a drop in the bucket compared to what the ultra-wealthy will get. Let's face it, this is simply another wealth transfer to the rich. They haven't even made much of an effort to disguise it. We reportedly already have approx $1.7 TRILLION +/- parked in short term investments looking for a better place. Another trillion dollars isn't needed....there is NO shortage of investment capital.
The bean counters say the tax cut will leave the Treasury short by approx one TRILLION dollars, to be offset by the ever popular "future growth" somewhere in the future. Maybe. Hopefully.
The one possible good thing in there: The one-time opportunity for corporations to bring back earnings from overseas that they haven't before now because of the higher taxes that would be due here. This has been done before (so much for "one-time") with minimal success, as it didn't create the new jobs it promised. Instead companies used their windfall for stock buy-backs and dividends, which *big surprise* went primarily to the already wealthy.
Those who read my protestations will again probably accuse me of being a pinko anti-capitalist, but nothing could be further from the truth. I am an ARDENT capitalist, one who understands it is the middle class that is truly the goose that laid America's golden egg, and who is trying to see to it it isn't slaughtered. Right now, in Washington at least, words like mine are like a lonely voice in the forest.
When you stiff the middle class and concentrate too much wealth in the hands of too few, you get Czarist Russia 1917 (revolution), America 1929 (Great Depression), TWA under Carl Icahn, (bankrupt), Eastern Airlines under Frank Lorenzo (kaput), etc. When companies share their wealth, you get wildly successful stories like The Staubach Companies (Roger Staubach), Broadcast.com (Mark Cuban), Ford (after Henry Ford doubled employee wages), Southwest Airlines, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and more. The owners actually made MORE money thanks to the efforts of their grateful employees than they EVER made before. Come on people....this ain't rocket surgery!
*sigh*
Rough landing ahead. Hold on.
S
