Warning: Tax Rant- but you should care!!
As a CPA, I regularly get tax updates. As I read the current tax bill provisions, it makes me very sad that more people are not outraged about this. It takes away so much from families. You get a little more child tax credit (assuming you have children that qualify) but lose all the personal exemptions, which this year was scheduled to be $4150/person. For a family of 4, that means $16,600 of additional taxable income. Do you really think the little bump in child tax credit is going to negate that?? If you itemize, the increase in the standard deduction does nothing for you. I haven’t even started to address the changes to itemized deductions, the loss of interest deduction on home equity loans (remember that home improvement you financed with a HELOC??), or the change to gain on sale of residence and many other provisions lost. I could go on and on.
Many small business are organized as S-corps, meaning they are taxed at their individual rate vs the corp rate which was typically higher. If the corp tax rate is now going to be lower than some individual rates, how does this benefit small business?
Wake up people!! Contact your legislators. They are still trying to reconcile what ends up being the “final” version. And if this passes and gets implemented, remember this at the ballot box in 2018.