The GOP "tax bill", the greatest overhaul of the tax code ever, will be voted on this week. The House of Representatives vote on it tomorrow; the Senate votes on it either Tuesday, right after the House vote, or on Wednesday. I wrote about this legislation on the 3rd of this month and my focus then was on the just-passed Senate version.
Below are some key points to the finalized bill with the updated figures from the Senate's version:
> All personal deductions are temporary (gone in 2025), while corporate deductions would be permanent.
> The top level of taxation drops from 39.6% to 37%, but that top level of taxation that currently does not kick in until $418,000 of income for single filers would not kick in until $500,000 of income ... for joint filers, the new threshold (that, in the Senate version, was $1,000,000) would now kick in at $600,000 of income.
> Corporate taxation would become territorial, meaning only profits made within the U.S. would be taxed.
> The child tax credit (which would have dropped from $2,000 to around $1,100) will now be $1,400. (More on that below.)
> The top level of taxation on "flow-through" companies ("S" corporations) would drop from nearly 40% down to 25%. [*** Watch video below this paragraph regarding "S" corps.]
> The overall corporate tax rate would drop from 35% down to 21%.
> The estate tax exemption would double from $11,000,000 to $22,000,000 ... eventually to be eliminated altogether.
> The Obamacare mandate is eliminated (Last I heard, a person would pay a penalty, not a tax, for not having health insurance. I guess they nicknamed it a tax so they could chip away at Obamacare.)
I will discuss the child tax credit in a moment, but, if you did not see this video from my December 3rd post, please watch this twenty-minute video that goes into "S corporations", and "pass-through" entities first.
Regarding the child tax credit, allow me to single out Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who said he would vote "no" if the proposed credit of $1,100 was not raised. It was raised to $1,400 and he said he will vote yes. Whereas the $1,400 figure doesn't even split the difference between that and the original $2,000, Senator Rubio's gain of another $300 on the total exemption will translate to roughly an extra $25 per month.
In my opinion, Senator Rubio made a lot of noise for a pittance of a return to gain favorable attention for himself.
One more senator I would like to single out is Tennessee Republican Senator Bob Corker. He voted "no"'on the Senate's version of the bill originally because he said he would not vote in favor of a bill that adds to the deficit. However, even though estimates show that this bill would add anywhere between $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion to the deficit, he is now a "yes" vote. Why? An added-at-the-last-minute provision for an additional tax reduction on "pass-through" companies, which was not included either the House's or Senate's original bills, and which would give a huge tax break to people like Corker (and Donald Trump and his family), swung his vote.
In my opinion, Senator Corker is a leech.
I have another video I would like you to watch. This one is from 'The Dylan Rattigan Show', which ran on the MSNBC cable news channel from 2010-2012. This particular video is of Rattigan passionately arguing the case about how money is being taken out of this country, to the benefit of the rich and to the detriment of the country itself. What he talks about here is still true today.
It is no secret that politicians, along with big business and the banks, have been doing more for the wealthy that the rest of the citizenry ... long before Trump took office. No, it is not right. What Rattigan in the video above calls the "extraction" of the U.S., is continuing ... and is getting worse. As sneaky as they may have been -- and no, hiding it from us did not make it right -- they are more emboldened and brash about doing it. What they are doing is a power-driven, forced series of actions that financially give them something gratifying, but leave us with the unsteady, disheveled remains.
An assault is happening. It is a wealth rape of this country, and this "tax bill" is the biggest single means to that end.
Terry
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