Tax Reform Under Trump 2017

That’s the SALT deduction (I believe SALT stands for State and Local Taxes, and that it includes property taxes) which I am pretty sure is capped at 10k. While that sounds like a lot to many, I know there are definitely juristictions where you pay more than 10k for those items.

You can but most people aren’t paying enough mortgage interest per year to offset the new standard deduction in any meaningful way, so it’s a push. Like if you have a 300k mortgage you’re paying like 10-15k in interest + escrow at current rates.

It’s entirely the elimination of the personal and dependent exemptions. If you’re in the 100-200k income bracket each $4k is taxed at 25%, so you pay $1000 more per person in your family.

I’ve been there, sorry to hear that, Scuzz. That was a double whammy year for me as I didn’t know I would be taxed on that.

The higher standard deduction + the SALT cap take away one of the advantages of home ownership, which seems anti-American but I guess that’s none of my business. Frigging GOP.

I am 63 now, and until I reach that magic age of 66 and 2 months I have a plan. I will work seasonally for a certain government agency and then when I am furloughed I will collect unemployment. Perhaps not the American way ( :) ) but it is, at this point in time, the best option for me.

Thankfully that seasonal job also comes with a really good health insurance option which continues even with me on unemployment.

This is somewhat false advertising as part of the reason that the standard deduction is higher is that they figured in 2 personal exemptions for the married filing option and 1 for the other options. Had they kept personal exemptions along with the jump in standard deduction you would see some great tax savings.

Yeah, of course, that’s why Fox and all their various friends kept promoting the higher standard deduction without ever mentioning what they took away. Anything else was fake news!

My refund was direct deposited today. No delays from the shutdown for me.

I went from around a $1,500 refund last year to owing $2,000 this year. I did make more money in 2018, but not enough to expect that big of a swing. It’s not that I don’t understand taxes, it’s that so much changed in 2018 I didn’t really know what to expect. The various articles suggested people would benefit. Yes, I probably should have sat down and worked it out.

I am ok with it mostly, I am just annoyed that the company I worked for last year was thrilled with their tax break of several million. Our CFO had a meeting bragging about how much we were saving, and hinted it would not be passed on to employees but would be used to build the company. The whole idea Republicans we’re pushing that companies would pass it on to employees proved to be BS in my case.

Transparent, obvious BS in nearly all cases. When has any handout to C-levels and corporate bottom lines ever actually helped workers rather than shareholders?

It’s almost like the entire system is in place to pursue the short-term goals of capital at the expense of literally everything else.

But no, the market will save us!

Idiots.

I.e. absorb the short term costs of layoffs and stock buybacks.

Fuckers the lot.

Will Amazon ever pay federal taxes in the U.S. ever again?

They haven’t paid any federal taxes since Trump took office.

https://theweek.com/speedreads-amp/823590/amazon-pay-0-federal-income-taxes-second-year-row

The company will not be required to pay the standard 21 percent income tax rate on its 2018 profits, and is claiming a tax rebate of $129 million, which ITEP describes as a “a tax rate of negative 1 percent.”

The one silver lining is that Trump is helping Bezos get richer, and since he hates Bezos that probably pisses him off.

I don’t blame the companies. Why should they give employees a raise if they don’t think it’s a cost effective action? And stock buybacks and dividends are smart business if they don’t feel they can get a better ROI on something else. What bothers me (besides our asshole CFO) is that the Republicans like to say trickledown economics work, when they keep proving they do not. The tax cuts were to make themselves and their rich supporters richer, no other reason. We all knew that, the bonuses we saw were just good PR.

Companies will give raises when they need workers, not because they just got a windfall. The company I referenced above is closing their local offices because costs are too high and there is too much competion for workers (they are competing with Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon, etc, who all pay much better). They wanted to pay us less, not more.

Your post is why this forum needs likes.

Now as far as my individual case goes, I’ll probably be all right (until the middle class part of the unwanted tax reform for large companies and rich people expires anyway), since I’m single with no dependents. Oregon has relatively high income taxes, though, so we’ll see.

The second sentence here contradicts the first. Needing workers, instead they’re laying them off rather than paying higher wages.

At some point people need to grasp that employers are suppressing wage growth and have been doing that for at least 3 decades. It isn’t an accident that real wages for workers have barely moved despite ‘low unemployment’ for much of that period while executive compensation has skyrocketed.

It’s cheaper for them to close the office here and reopen elsewhere where there is less competition and a cheaper workforce. So they say. Other factors like rent, as well.

It’s simple supply and demand. In career fields where tech isn’ t reducing the work force or the markert isn’t flooded, they pay more. See trucking, engineering, accounting, etc.

I am in a low-level finance job. There are a million of us in the area and they have been increasingly using tech to accomplish the job without us. When they can’t find people do what jobs they have, they will pay more.

Fast food is another example, a higher minimum wage leads to more automation, so fewer jobs.

It isn’t. Simple supply and demand doesn’t explain 30 years of stagnant worker wages while unemployment was below 5% most of that time. That takes an effort to achieve that result. Like e.g. every time wages start to creep up, the Fed throttles the economy to prevent it in the guise of fighting inflation.

It is a calculated result, going back to the election of Reagan.

I mean I was a corporate executive. I sat in the meetings where we discussed minimizing wage increases in order to hit targets that would reward us with bigger bonuses.

http://www.hamiltonproject.org/charts/the_share_of_economic_output_that_workers_receive_has_fallen

Companies are making record profits, but those profits go to management, not labor.

Good companies also give raises to retain workers as well.