TAXES: “With U.S. Congress members focused during their August recess on finding ways to lower the corporate tax rate, industry groups and other sectors of society are gearing up to fight proposed changes to the personal income tax.
While tax cuts for business have garnered the most headlines, lobbyists and lawmakers have conceded that rewriting the corporate tax code will be a long slog…
Still, proposed changes to the personal tax code have already stirred opposition from realtors, home builders, mortgage lenders and charities. These groups say proposed changes will hurt home sales and cut charitable contributions…
To simplify the tax code, Republicans have proposed eliminating nearly all tax write-offs including those for state and local taxes, then doubling the standard deduction. This would eliminate the incentive to itemize and should drastically reduce the number of taxpayers who do so…
Estimates suggest more than half of taxpayers would stop itemizing under the proposed plan, Dietz said, warning that this would create a large ripple effect through the economy. He said people in early years of a mortgage would suffer most, along with prospective home buyers...
Charitable organizations are not arguing against increasing the standard deduction. But they are asking members of Congress to consider creating a ‘universal deduction,’ so taxpayers taking the standard deduction can get additional credit for donations without itemizing.
Taxpayers claim an estimated $13 billion each year in charitable deductions. Charities fear giving would plummet if the standard deduction were doubled without creating a universal deduction…
If lobbyists defeat the reform effort, Congress could try to cut rates without structural tax code changes, said Charles Boustany, a former Republican member of the tax-code writing House Ways and Means Committee who left Congress in January.”
-Ginger Gibson, “U.S. tax change proposals anger builders, realtors, charities,” Reuters, Aug. 14, 2017 04:05am