This tax bill actually raised the taxes of millions of middle class Americans.
Corporations (including enemies of conservatives like Facebook and Google) made out like bandits, receiving a tax rate cut from 35 percent to 21 percent, while many individuals in the middle class got screwed.
Blame the Robert “Bedsheets” Byrd Amendment requiring “revenue neutrality.”
The Uniparty is not about to stop the gravy train.
Hello! I’m not saying you’re wrong, especially since it’s not really time to do actual tax returns yet; that’s when we will all really see this impact. However in all simulations I’ve run for our (my wife and I) tax situation for next year we don’t see much difference (certainly not much more than a couple hundred dollars for the whole year) and we certainly have more take home pay each paycheck. Let me give some of our real numbers as an example.
We make about $100,000 a year combined. I’m not sure how you define “middle class” but that figure is definitely “middle class” as far as I’m concerned. In the old tax system yes we could deduct our mortgage interest and property taxes and yes that will be going away next year, however we now net about $300 a month more in take home pay (without changing our personal deductions). So that’s good right?
I mean according to my calculations, we are indeed going to get less for a tax refund (maybe not even anything), but that refund would normally be about $2000, combined even with the state’s refund so really only the federal would normally be about $1,400. Now we may not get that much but we net more in take home pay every month, which works out to be $3,600 a year ($300 x 12).
So honestly, at least from what our actual experience is, and also depending how one defines “middle class income”, I don’t see how the tax cut has not benefited millions of people in the true “middle class”.
Maybe you/your family earn much more (more than $200,000 a year) and if so that’s great I’m happy for you. But I’m sorry, if you do earn that much than you are not “middle class” in my opinion. Also, if you’re single than you aren’t getting the tax benefit if being married when making more than $100,000/yr. so I don’t know if our (yours and ours) situations are comparable in that sense either.
In my opinion, again from all the simulations I’ve seen so far applying to my/our case, we will still be ahead even after losing the mortgage deduction (which by the way we were going to lose anyway because we paid our house off this year but I ran simulations even assuming we still had a mortgage just to check. You can too plugging in our previous mortgage payment of about $500 a month and $2,600 in annual property tax).
So I’d like to see what you think. You don’t have to give your real examples if you don’t want, just use our numbers (no personal deductions for either of us from paycheck) because maybe I’m wrong. But I don’t think so, again we’ve already seen a pay increase from the tax cut.
Whoops sorry I should have told you how much interest we paid not the mortgage payment to run a simulation. It was about $1,000 last year as I recall.