Except I didn’t say that. If you have more than 10k in SALT deductions, you may have lower deductions overall, but that’s not most people. And the degree to which it was offset by paying lower income taxes, again for most people, was a tax win.

the standard deduction went up but a ton of itemized deductions went away. Union dues, per diem difference, as well as most charitable donations off the top of my head. Personally I went from around 45k in deductions to 24k married filing jointly. 12k per person. Even taking out SALT my taxes went up because I still would have been over 24k in deductions. I’m really not complaining that’s just what happened.

Yep, sounds like you lost out. Personally, my income is so irregular that it’s hard to compare the income tax burden YOY, although by the tables I would be paying less at the same income. On the deductions side it has been better as my state has extremely low property and relatively low income taxes, hence the constant influx of New-Englander retirees.

I recognize it did help most sub 6 figure households (majority of middle class) and didn’t make a huge difference so I’m fine with it.

Correction- it made a nominal difference to most middle-income Americans. Some for the better, some for the worse. Those who did benefit will see those benefits expire in around 4 years. It was all a shell game on the middle class to distract from the massive corporate tax cuts the bill was actually designed around. R’s aren’t lying when they say they’re the party of lower taxes- it’s just not you’re taxes they’re talking about.

And no, none of you guys are rich in the context of this discussion.

Is this the part where we put our heads in the sand and pretend that corporate taxes aren’t another way to tax the middle class?

“Informed by our empirical estimate, we can gauge the incidence of corporate taxes on consumers by relating the welfare change of consumers induced by a marginal change in the net‐​of‐​tax rate to the sum of the welfare changes of consumers, workers, and firm owners. We find that the incidence on consumers, workers, and shareholders is 31 percent, 38 percent, and 31 percent, respectively. This stands in sharp contrast to the case where we do not take into account the effect of corporate income tax on product prices; under this assumption, workers and shareholders will bear 42 percent and 58 percent of the tax burden, respectively.”

The lion’s share of consumers, workers, and shareholders are composed of the middle class. Taxing corporations is good politics, but bad policy - unless you want more revenue from your largest income group (the middle class).

Corporate Taxes and Retail Prices

^^^^^ this

Understood. I was leaving that part out for the sake of discussing our (upper middle class) effective tax burden. When discussing corporate tax rates there’s several arguments on both sides with merit. corporations employ workers who pay tax, write offs, depreciation, deferred tax, ect…. It’s endless.

You remember why it was only valid until 2025, though, correct? It will sound very familiar. It was a result of having to use reconciliation to pass the bill. Such is the way of our government nowadays. The same will likely be true of any legislation for the foreseeable future until a party has a supermajority in Congress.

I'd have to get deeper in the weeds to investigate that claim. The corporate taxes do not expire, so at its face, the idea that reconciliation barred permanent changes seems like misdirection- which the PR job on this bill had plenty of.

The individual tax cuts were scheduled to phase out right after what would have been the end of Trump’s second term. It was widely seen at the time to be a thinly veiled attempt to keep the middle class placated while locking in permanent corporate tax cuts. The corporate rate was Paul Ryan’s baby, and I don’t doubt he would have preferred to leave individual taxes right where they were; but to get Trump on board, he had to give him something that allowed him to claim victory for the common man. What they gave him was a smoke & mirrors tax “cut” for the middle class that would expire shortly after he would leave office (considering 2 terms)- making it the next POTUS’ mess to clean up.