Having to retrain our brains to what is deductible and what is not is obviously annoying. For a guy like me (senior wide body F/O with 2 kids) it comes down to a tax savings of around 5k a year if you do all the math. While the personal exemption is gone, the state and local tax is capped at 10k on the schedule A along with the loss of unreimbursed employee expenses, you have to remember that most of these were cancelled out by the AMT. (The AMT also eliminated the personal exemptions). Now with the AMT deduction increased to around $109,000 with the phaseout at $1M, many of us will see the AMT now as a non-player. The child tax credit is $2000 and does not phase out now until $400k and the child has to be 16 or under, but there is an another option of $500 credit for other dependents which are 17 or older or for elderly or disabled parents that you provide more than half of their support.