I know that. But it’s not looking good, is it? Last week the Senate failed to protect those deductions. This week the House passed the Senate version of the bill in a massive $4 trillion budget outline. So I’m not hopeful.
I think you’ll see several critters in both houses fight like hell to save those. One thing about it though, for most people the new standard deduction is so high that many more people won’t even have to itemize so it becomes moot. For a married family tat itemization has to be over $24,000. That’s way more than my mortgage, taxes and everything rolled into one.
Like I just said above, it finally occurred to me what is actually happening here. President Trump wants to pass the “largest tax cut in history,” because of course he does.
I think now that the goal is to make that cut the corporate tax cut.
The problem is, you have to make it revenue neutral to pass via reconciliation in the Senate.
So, their mucking around in the income tax code to increase revenue in order to pay for the corporate tax cut.
Honestly, if this is the end game, I’m going full on social justice warrior and saying just raise the income tax on people earning over $500K to something crazy like 50 percent. I don’t really want to be the one standing in this game of musical chairs.
Besides, this is a populist president and there is nothing more populist than sticking it to “the rich.” Trump’s true base would absolutely go for this.