The Republicans passed a tax bill on both houses intended to hurt homeowners and public services in blue states. Home prices will tumble. And that’s not all.
“The tax bill approved by the Senate is many things, offering a huge tax cut for corporations, lower rates for the wealthy, and a big victory for Republicans and the White House.
“It is also an economic dagger aimed at high-tax, high-cost and generally Democratic-leaning areas — most notably New York City and its neighbors.
“The bill, if enacted into law, could send home prices tumbling 10 percent or more in parts of the New York area, according to one economic analysis. It could increase the regional tax burden, complicating companies’ efforts to attract skilled workers. It could make it harder for state and local governments to pay for upgrades to the transit system and other infrastructure. And it could force cuts in federal programs that help immigrants, the elderly and other low-income residents afford the region’s high cost of living.
“Most significantly, the bill would eliminate the deduction for state and local income taxes, and would cap the deduction for property taxes at $10,000.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It will certainly impact the wealthy property owners as they recieve the bulk of this tax benefit.
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They are the only ones who can afford it!
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I you mean by wealthy two long Island school Teachers with two kids in college . It will certainly affect them . If you take the combined SALT deduction and the loss of the dependent credits you are easily looking at at a 50k -60k loss in deductions or 15k in taxes .Hard to see that the drop in rates helps them much 28-25 % and15-12 %
But there is a silver lining these are the people who drive the economy who go to the Malls who fly off on vacations and buy cars . How quickly can you say recession . Hopefully not soon enough . Then comes the bad news when Democrats sweep they will do nothing .
The wealthy property owners will do just fine pass through income will be taxed at a lower rate 25% vs 39% rate and the pass through from corporate profits with a starting point 15% lower and no loopholes closed , taxed at the 20% capital gains rate will be a tremendous windfall . Hard to see them buying a second 60′ yacht . It will just build the Tax free estate . No more need for an estate planer but their money will still sit in the Cayman’s
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Wealthier families won’t feel the loss of SALT at all, because they have been paying taxes under the Alternative Minimum Tax regime.
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The districts serving the top 1% will do just fine: the deductions the parents will be able to take in other places will more than offset the SALT deductions… the middle class homeowners in heavily taxed states will be the ones who suffer the most, and the GOP will blame it on the profligate Democrats in their statehouses… here’s hoping the middle class homeowners realize who is benefitting the most from this badly conceived legislation—
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“here’s hoping the middle class homeowners realize who is benefitting the most from this badly conceived legislation—”
I doubt it.
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Sick. Typical. And PUSH BACK. Make noise. The GOP and that big, fat Dump are despicable.
Now is the time to push back hard!
Here’s good news. Douglas County said NO to vouchers.
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Excellent news!
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My Senator Todd Young (R) NW Indiana just sent out an email telling all Hoosiers how we and businesses would benefit from the ‘tax reform’. He commiserated with us on how hard it is to live with taxes the way they currently exist. What a pack of lies.
Here is another lie put out by Grassley (R) Iowa. Do they all think we are stupid?
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Why aren’t you paying the estate tax? Maybe because you bought 311,000 bottles of whisky.
Talking to the Des Moines Register, Grassley argued fervently for a repeal of the estate tax, a tax that applies to a small percentage of high-value estates each year.
“I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing,” Grassley told the newspaper, “as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”
The argument, then: If, instead of blowing your money on booze and “women,” you were to invest it, you too could have an estate large enough to qualify.
How much are we talking about? Well, in 2017, the estate tax applies only to estates worth $5.49 million or more. In the interest of providing life advice to our readers, we decided to figure out just how much you’d need to cut back on your booze and moving pictures to save enough to qualify for that tax…
http://thebaltimorepost.com/why-arent-you-paying-the-estate-tax-maybe-because-you-bought-311000-bottles-of-whisky
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Senator Todd Young (R-NW Indiana) had the gaul to put out this letter to The Star in Indianapolis. It is full of half-truths and lies. I can hardly wait for all the businesses that will now boom in Indiana and don’t know how I’ll spend all the tax money I’ll be getting back. Hope I don’t notice the cuts in Medicare when the effects of this bill hits. Hope people on ACA don’t care when their premiums raise 10% or more. He states that this bill will benefit all hard-working Hoosiers. I’m retired so guess it doesn’t apply to me.
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Senate Tax Bill Benefits Hoosiers By: U.S. Senator Todd Young (R-Ind.)
Indianapolis Star
December 3, 2017
“The world has changed a lot in the last three decades, but our outdated tax code remains the same. This week, the Senate delivered on our promise to the American people by taking action to reform the tax code and end the Obamacare individual mandate tax.
“Over the last seven years, I have traveled the state talking to Hoosiers and soliciting their ideas on what Washington can do to help improve their lives. One thing I’ve heard consistently is that our current tax code places more burdens on growth and opportunity than it does to incentivize them. This is completely backwards. Our code should incentivize work, saving, and investment, not constrain it.
“Our guiding principle for tax reform was simple: allow hardworking Hoosiers to keep and control more of their money. The goal throughout this process has been to ensure middle-class families and those of modest means see real tax relief. Many American workers have not seen a pay raise in a decade. And over fifty percent of American families are living paycheck to paycheck. This is the pay raise Hoosiers have been waiting for.
“We needed to fix our broken tax structure for people like Nathan from Indianapolis, who recently emailed my office about why he needs tax reform. ‘After taxes I’m struggling from paycheck to paycheck just to make ends meet, and being able to keep more of what I’ve earned would definitely help me out immensely,’ he wrote.
“Tax reform will help our small and medium-sized businesses grow, too.
“Debbie from Clark County contacted my office about her business’ challenges. ‘We are constantly striving to reinvest in our company through new equipment, and increased wages to hire and retain good employees. A lower corporate tax will allow us to buy more equipment, offer benefits and better wages.’
“American-based businesses see some of the highest tax rates of any in the industrialized world. This limits innovation and job growth and causes wages to remain stagnant. We must create an environment that fosters the creation of good-paying jobs and keeps our businesses competitive in an increasingly global economy.
“Since our last reform thirty years ago, the code has become littered with special interest tax breaks and loopholes that have created a complex and unfair tax regime. ‘Our tax system has become so complicated, the average person needs to hire someone with expertise to help. If most of us didn’t have to hire help, right there we’d be saving money,’ says Susan from Indianapolis.
“In fact, according to the Tax Foundation, taxpayers spend a combined $99 billion each year complying with individual income tax returns and U.S. businesses spend over $147 billion. By simplifying the code, we will reduce compliance costs so individuals and businesses can keep and invest their hard-earned money.
“By passing the Senate’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, we also made good on our promise to repeal the individual mandate tax – the most unpopular part of Obamacare. In Indiana, nearly 140,000 Hoosiers choose to pay the tax instead of buying insurance they don’t want or can’t afford. Eighty-one percent of those who paid the tax made less than $50,000 per year, and 40 percent made less than $25,000.
“Repealing the Obamacare tax, doubling the standard deduction, doubling the Child Tax Credit, and lowering rates for middle-income Americans makes hard-working Hoosiers big winners in this bill.
“The world has changed at an extraordinary pace in the past thirty years. Americans have changed the way we travel, how we communicate, and how we work, but our tax code has not kept up. The Senate took a major step toward bringing our outdated tax system into the 21st century this week with the passage of this bill.”
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This is about as frightening as anything I’ve ever read…creating a private spy network to justify the Trump administration’s political agenda. Needs to be done because the existing intelligence community is obviously finding truths that Trump can’t tolerate.
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Trump White House Weighing Plans for Private Spies to Counter “Deep State” Enemies
December 4 2017, 9:24 p.m.
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION is considering a set of proposals developed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a retired CIA officer — with assistance from Oliver North, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal — to provide CIA Director Mike Pompeo and the White House with a global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials and others familiar with the proposals. The sources say the plans have been pitched to the White House as a means of countering “deep state” enemies in the intelligence community seeking to undermine Trump’s presidency.
The creation of such a program raises the possibility that the effort would be used to create an intelligence apparatus to justify the Trump administration’s political agenda…
https://interc.pt/2kkwOHL
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It may also hurt some cities in Texas as the tax rate is high. A good size property in Houston in a desirable area, for example, can pay $20,000 in taxes. It won’t bother the millionaires, but working families will be impacted.
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This entire tax bill sends the message that the plutocracy has been unleashed. If that is not a sufficient rallying cry for the 2018 elections, I do not know what is. There seems to be a fairness issue since it is interesting that the blue states have provided more in taxes to the federal government than the receive. Many of the red states such as Idaho which receives $1.25 in federal dollars for every $1.00 paid in federal taxes is a beneficiary. Does this new tax proposal exacerbate the situation?
Conservatives who favor vertical checks and balances ought to be outraged because this provision in the tax code strengthens federal powers and weakens state and local government. When I ask people would they rather pay federal or local taxes, most choose to keep their tax dollars close to home where they can keep close watch.
The question is will there be candidates astute enough to run with a message that will bring us together?
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Man, people who have an asset valued high enough to warrant a $20,000+ property tax bill; to have the means to pay a $20,000+ property tax bill in a state where the median household income is $61,000; whose home values are wildly inflated from exclusionary zoning; who elect legislators solely on the basis of whether they’ll fight affordable housing initiatives and protect NIMBYism in general; who directly benefit from racist mortgage lending and real estate practices; and whose taxes pay for private detectives to investigate families who enroll in their wholly property-tax-funded schools and for police officers to profile and harass “outsiders” (wink) sure can’t catch a break!
The disaster of the GOP/Trump tax plan lies in the pass-through, corporate, top income bracket, and estate tax cuts, not in ending sweetheart deals for high-income property owners. Any measure that reduces the cost of housing in metros like NYC is a good thing! There is no God- or government-given right for housing values to continually appreciate, and there are tangibly harmful spillover effects of downzoned neighborhoods and suburbs: most notably concentrations of poverty and hypersegregation, and sprawl/fossil-fuel emissions.
The only thing we can say with absolute certainty is that under the GOP/Trump tax plan high-earning blue state households that make their money from wages rather than investments are going to pay more in federal taxes (full disclosure: I fall, very painfully, into that bucket). Beyond that, everything is an assumption. For example, the face of American progressivism, Bill de Blasio, has repeatedly assured naysayers that his proposed steep New York City income tax hike on high-income filers would definitely not lead to any loss of revenue or competitiveness, or an increase in the so-called “183 Club,” the people whose financial interests are in New York but who purposefully spend >183 days a year elsewhere to evade state and city income taxes. De Blasio also can’t play the “double taxation” card: we New York City residents are not allowed to deduct our city income tax from our state returns, and no one’s said a peep about that.
There is nothing in the GOP/Trump tax plan that decreases state or local income tax or property tax rates; whether states/municipalities reduce those rates is up to voters and elected officials. Users will have to bear more of the true cost of operating private-public non-integrated schools.
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If the value of homes decline, that hurts working families, whose biggest asset is their home
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A “working family” that is itemizing deductions is in reality very comfortably middle class. The value of their home is propped up by exclusionary zoning and the regulations and bad behavior described by Rothstein. Those laws and regulations, by the way, weren’t created by magic fairies, they were created by lawmakers and officials catering to white taxpayers and voters.
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Tim – I’m a white middle class homeowner. How can I get my mojo back? This new state of affairs isn’t working for me.
And I vote.
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You’re from Buffalo, right? Hope you live in the city proper, because holy mackerel you have got a crazy number of Trump fans in the county who are getting what they voted for!
Click to access 2016-General-Election-Canvass-Book-WEB.pdf
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This is part of a longer summary of all the benefits we will get from the tax reform bill. It comes from the WH. Isn’t it wonderful that ‘trickle down’ really works. Wow, higher wages, more jobs, companies returning to the US is just around the corner! Wow. Household incomes will increase by $4000. [BS!!!!!!] The only positive thing about this is it was obviously written by an aide. There are complete sentences with no mention of how wonderful Tump is.
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HIGHER GROWTH, HIGHER WAGES, AND MORE JOBS: The tax reform bills in the House and Senate will increase investment in the American economy, leading to higher growth, increased wages, and more jobs for hardworking Americans.
• Cutting the top Federal corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent and allowing businesses to write off the full cost of non-structure capital investments immediately would mean faster economic growth and higher wages, according to President Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA).
o GDP could increase by between 3 and 5 percent in the long term.
o American annual household income could increase by an average of $4,000.
• A 3 to 5 percent increase in GDP over ten years could represent an additional $700 billion to $1.2 trillion in economic output, based on CEA’s calculations and the Congressional Budget Office’s baseline.
o Just cutting the corporate tax rate to 20 percent is estimated to increase long-run GDP by 3.1 percent, according to the Tax Foundation.
• Developed countries that have lowered their effective corporate tax rates have experienced wage growth across skill levels.
o Wages for American workers of all skill levels would increase after corporate taxes are cut.
o Developed countries with the low corporate tax rates have seen significantly higher wage growth compared with developed countries with higher rates.
• Cutting corporate tax rates will encourage firms to invest back in the United States, creating well-paying jobs for hardworking Americans.
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Lots of “coulds” here, huh? I can say one thing for the Republicans. They believe in their right to screw everyone over on behalf of their donors.
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Forget Schedule A cause there will be nothing left to deduct, and even though they are increasing the standard deduction they are getting rid of the personal exemptions so “more taxes for almost everybody!”.
Unfortunately, that extra money for the IRS must come out of what I normally give to charity. Others on a fixed income will be forced to do the same.
Looks like a lose – lose situation for the majority of Americans.
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The end of public education as we know it? Looks like it
Why? The Combination of allowing private school tuition to be deducted up to $10,000
with the disallowance of deducting property taxes over $10,000.
,
If the bill passes with its limitation on property tax deductions and allowance for deducting
private K-12 school tuition, the public education system will be unrecognizable within a decade.
What would happen?
It is a huge shift — suddenly property tax deductions will be capped at $10,000
while at the same time allowing up to $10,000 in deductions for private schools.
Those who are on the fence about sending their children to public or private school
will more likely than not enroll their children in private schools.
At the same time, there will be intense pressure on local School Districts to lower property taxes because the amount over $10,000 will not be deductible.
As this process plays out year after year
–more and more students will attend private schools,
–the public school parent constituency will be smaller
–support for public schools with go down because homeowners
will be stressed by property taxes in those districts where they are above $10,000.
Suddenly, the government does not distinguish between the expenses
on private and public schools — both deductions are capped at $10,000.
In a decade’s time pressure on school boards will have worked and we will end
up with a hollowed out version of what had been.
And then parent’s, increasing worried about the quality of public schools,
will say, let’s set up a system where there money is going directly to a school
that will be more in accordance with their views and which is less expensive.
Over all expenditures will go down\ except at the most elite institutions.
As for those who have less than $10,000 to spend, they’ll be stuck with a
truncated public system. But who ever cared about them anyway?
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Maybe we can get a tuition waiver for our kids to go to public schools to cover our lost deductions.
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Thanks for sharing this with me Tim. I’m glad that my neighborhood in Amherst (just outside the Buffalo City limits) voted for Clinton. It was fascinating though to see the areas which voted Trump – the rural areas, some of the blue collar suburbs, and the uber affluent developments (which not too long ago were farm country before they became destinations for more elite residents. These are also the regions where students score highest on the assessments with the exception of Wlliamsville in Amherst who out performs them all).
My representative to the House is democrat Brian Higgins, but those Trumpers have republican Collins (a true embarrassment to Buffalonians) who was given this gerrymandered oddly shaped district and still almost lost the election. Collins who only served one term as Erie County Executive before we ousted him en mass. Collins who dessimated the library system and took money away from The Arts – including funds for feeding the animals at the Buffalo Zoo. Collins – one of the first Trump supporters. Hopefully his constituents wise up and vote him out of office.
As you can see – I have strong opinions. Sometimes I too feel that the country is getting what they deserve, but I’m part of this country, too, and the pain right now is hitting too close to home.
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We can’t afford more months of that Dump. This country is sinking and Mother Earth is dying and FAST!
Can you imagine having to be in the company of that Dump? Creeps me out.
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Yvonne, how about the size of the LIE? It comes from the WH (Dump territory): ARE WE SO STUPID AS TO BELIEVE THIS??
Adding some hard numbers to Ed Feulner’s argument, Heritage Senior Economics Fellow Stephen Moore dispels a common tax-reform myth in Creators Syndicate:The rich see most of the benefits from tax cuts. Citing a recent Cato study, Moore writes, “Lower-middle-class people — who make between $40,000 and $50,000 a year — will see a 46 percent reduction in taxes paid; people who make more than $1 million will see roughly a 7 percent reduction in taxes.”
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This is a GOOD article to read if you want to know the amount of meddling the three wealthiest families are doing. They are strictly looking out for themselves. Quote:”If there’s one thing the three families agree on, it’s cutting taxes for rich people and for the companies they control.”
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Quartz: The three ultra-rich families battling for control of the Republican party
…American historians see a titanic clash on the horizon. What’s coming next is a battle between “the very idea of democracy, and that human beings are created equal” against the notion that power in America should be concentrated in the hands of a very few, very wealthy people, just as it once was in medieval Europe, predicts Heather Richardson, a history professor at Boston College and author of several books about the GOP….
Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam Ochsorn were the largest individual Republican donors in 2016, after jumping headfirst into Republican funding over the past decade. Adelson donated just $1 million to Newt Gingrich’s exploratory presidential campaign in 2006. Last year, the two donated some $83 million—much of that of it in congressional races after reportedly deciding (paywall) that Donald Trump had no chance of becoming president…
Despite the Koch brothers’ initial distaste for Trump, his cabinet is stacked with people they’ve funded, from CIA head Mike Pompeo to budget director Mick Mulvaney, to a host of coal-industry linkedappointees….The Koch brothers and their donor networks plan to spend $400 million on their candidates in the run-up to the 2018 election. They’ve also recently invested $650 million in a group that acquired Time…
In 2015, however, it [The Mercer Family Foundation ] donated $24.5 million (pdf, pg. 1) to charities and to political causes like the Media Research Center, which says it wants to “neutralize” mainstream media,…
If there’s one thing the three families agree on, it’s cutting taxes for rich people and for the companies they control…
https://qz.com/1085077/mercers-vs-kochs-vs-adelsons-the-three-ultra-rich-families-battling-for-control-of-the-republican-party/
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