By Dan Calabrese —— Bio and Archives December 13, 2017
Comments | Print This | Subscribe | Email Us
The agreement would set the top individual tax rate at 37%, a person familiar with the deal said. That is lower than today’s 39.6% rate and lower than the top rate in each of the bills that passed the House and Senate. Republicans said they were considering that change to address concerns from high-earning residents in high-tax states who would take a hit because they would lose the ability to fully deduct state and local taxes.
The corporate rate would be 21%, the person said. That is higher than the 20% rate Republicans included in the House and Senate tax bills, and it would take effect in 2018. The Senate bill had delayed that rate cut—from today’s 35%—until 2019. The agreement is also expected to eliminate the corporate alternative minimum tax, the person said. Congressional Republicans reached the agreement just before heading to a lunch at the White House with President Donald Trump, who will give a speech about the tax bill later Wednesday.Good news that the alternative minimum tax is also eliminated. It's terrible. There are still a lot of details that haven't been released, though. We still don't know how many individual rates there will be, or what those rates will be. We still don't know if the provisions survived to open up drilling in the ANWR or to kill the ObamaCare individual mandate. We don't know for sure what will happen with mortgage interest deductions and state and local tax deductions. But what we know so far about the biggest items is reasonably encouraging. President Trump will have more to say about it later today. Let's get this done. By the way, Democrats are demanding that Republicans not hold the final vote until Doug Jones replaces Luther Strange. Yeah, thanks for the suggestion. No
Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain
Follow all of Dan’s work, including his series of Christian spiritual warfare novels, by liking his page on Facebook.