This 429 page abomination of a tax bill (HR1) unleashed by the U.S. House of Representatives moves us one step closer to establishing an oligarchy in this country, with massive, unnecessary tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations.
Corporation tax rates will be slashed to ridiculously low levels, and the wealthy will benefit by elimination of inheritance taxes, alternative minimum taxes and expanded brackets with lower tax rates.
Hedge funds, law firms, and real estate companies will benefit by being able to reduce their tax rate from 39.6 percent to 25 percent using the so-called “pass-through” business strategies. Hedge fund guys will still be able to exploit the carried interest loophole even after #45 promised they would go away because “these hedge fund guys are getting away with murder.” And by slashing the tax rate on foreign profits, the tax bill encourages multinational corporations to outsource more jobs and shift more profits offshore.
Seniors, low-income and middle-class taxpayers will be footing the bill for these changes through healthcare and service cuts. Taxpayers will lose the ability to either deduct or fully deduct state and local income and sales taxes, property taxes, mortgage loan and student loan interest, and medical expenses.
Large middle class families will lose the personal and dependent exemptions that currently reduce their tax load. The net benefit of increasing the standard deduction will for many taxpayers not make up for the loss of these other deductions.
“Businesses and the wealthy are the principal beneficiaries of the tax plan,” according to Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics Inc. “Lower income households ultimately see no benefit.”
The independent group Tax Policy Center finds that by 2027, the top 0.1 percent would enjoy an average tax cut of about $278,000, while the bottom 20 percent of earners would get an average break of $10.
This latest cruel scheme by the Republican-controlled House was conjured up in a rushed, unconstitutional partisan manner without utilizing proper procedural methods and oversight normally extended for such legislation. The tax cuts for the corporate and wealthy Americans are so massive that even with a cruel budget plan to cut nearly $500 billion from Medicare and more than $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next 10 years, the tax giveaways will still add over $1.7 trillion to the deficit.
Not only is this devastating for seniors, low-income and middle-class taxpayers, but it reeks of hypocrisy from a party that demanded offsets to cover funding for Hurricane Sandy victims, and for the past eight years complained constantly about debt and deficits.
I and thousands of voters from Clark County are expecting that U.S. Rep. Jamie Herrera Beutler, R-Battle Ground, votes no on this bad piece of legislation.
