The NPR Politics Podcast - Your Questions On The Tax Bill, Answered

Episode Date: November 20, 2017

With just six weeks left of 2017, Republicans are still aiming to pass major tax legislation before the end of the year. This episode: your questions about what's in the tax bill. With host/White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House correspondent Scott Horsley and political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, it's Guy Raz here, host of How I Built This, with a quick recommendation. Every holiday weekend comes with a lot of waiting, traffic, airport security lines. And so while you're waiting, why don't you just binge on How I Built This? Each episode, I speak with a founder of a company who has an incredible story of how it all began. You can find How I Built This on the NPR One app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Professor Nagel's Social Work 530 class from the Portland State University School of Social Work in beautiful downtown Portland, Oregon. This podcast was recorded at 12.36 on Monday, the 20th of November.

Things may have changed by the time you hear this. To keep up with all of NPR's political coverage, check out NPR.org, download the NPR One app, or listen to your local public radio station. Okay, here's the show! Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast, and it's time for a tax-stravaganza, taxapalooza,

taxamageddon. Tax-mento. Yes, whatever you call it. I have got the NPR Politics Pods, two biggest tax nerds here in the studio, along with me, I'm like third, and we've got answers to a whole stack of your questions. I'm Tamara Keith, I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Scott Horsley,'ve got answers to a whole stack of your questions. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR.

I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. I think we should put Kelsey Snell on that list of tax nerds. Does this mean I'm now fourth? I am not ranking anybody here. I have no judgments on this. Kelsey Snell being the newest member of the pod squad who is not here for this incredibly nerdy podcast.

But who in this room is excited about taxes? So there are just six weeks left in 2018. And in that time, the president and Republicans in Congress are pushing hard to pass major tax legislation. The House passed their bill last week. Now all the action has moved to the Senate, where just three Republican no's could derail the whole thing. But it seems like there is something resembling momentum. The president has been tweeting. A few Republicans have been waffling. But guess what? Today isn't about politics. It's about policy.

Absolutely. Because that's what matters. All right. So last Monday, we talked a lot about taxes. We answered a few questions from listeners, but then we asked if there were any more. And oh, my, there are more questions. We got dozens and dozens of great questions. And Danielle and Scott are here to answer them for you. It's a turbo pod. Is that like TurboTax? Thank you, Scott. But we won't need TurboTax in the future, right? A little fit on a postcard?

All on a postcard. Fact check? You might have to do some other calculations elsewhere before you can get them all onto that postcard. So I'm going to say fact check meh. How about that? All right. Moving on to listener questions. We've got Carrie McCormick in San Antonio, Texas, who writes, I've heard a lot of differing points of view on who will benefit in the middle class with the current tax bill.

The most concerning for me is that I heard that if you make between $75,000 and $200,000 a year, you would actually see an increase of five hundred to seven hundred dollars a year. Is that true? All right. So to really make this simple, I'm going to talk only about the House bill at first, and I'm only going to talk about the short term. So were it passed, how it would affect people in the next year or two. And are we talking about family or are we talking about single? Doesn't matter who you are. Doesn't matter if you are married or not or partnered or cohabiting. Doesn't matter. All right. So the Joint Committee on Taxation, which is a bipartisan committee in Congress that gamed all of this out, did all of the math, they broke this down by income distribution. And what they found was for people

between 75 and 200K, there are a few more gradations here, but in general, around three quarters of them, as of 2019, were the House bill passed, as is, they would see some sort of a decrease in their tax bill. A lot of them of over $500. Meanwhile, around 10 to 15 percent, give or take, would see some sort of an increase. So a minority would see an increase, but, increase, but they might be pretty upset about it. One other way to put it is this. The Tax Policy Center, which is another group that does really good math on this sort of thing, they found that the average federal tax change for people who are roughly in this range, their tax bill would fall by around $1,600. That's pretty big. That said, the Tax Policy Center also said that, you know, true, but in 2018, while three quarters of people would see a tax cut of

around $1,900, 7% would see an average tax increase of $2,100. I've thrown a lot of numbers at you, but the broad point is this. A lot of people would see some sort of a tax cut, but you're going to see a sizable minority of people who might have some sort of an increase, plus a chunk of people who will see very little difference. And the thing with taxes is if your taxes are going up or you think your taxes might go up, you feel it a lot more than those people whose taxes are going down. Right. And one more important thing, based on Joint Committee on Taxation numbers of both of these bills, like, let's be really clear here. Disproportionately, the benefits from these bills would go to higher income people. That is true on both sides. OK, let's go to the next question. It comes from India Peju. India writes, quote, I haven't heard anyone really talk about the exemptions going away. That seems to be a major blow. Great. Standard deduction doubles, but I lose my exemptions.

If you are a married couple with more than one kid, you get less of a deduction. Adding $300 to the child tax credit doesn't do much to change that. I am part of a family of five with three kids under 16. Old way, standard deduction of $12,600, personal exemptions of $20,250, and child tax credit of $3,000 for a total of $35,850. New way, standard deduction of $25,200, no personal exemptions, child tax credit of $49.50 for a total of $30,150. That is a lot of numbers.

A difference of over $5,000 in tax relief. Why is no one talking about this? Well, actually, there's a lot of Democrats who've been talking a great deal about this, because this was something they pointed out quickly about both the House and the Senate bills, is that on the one hand, they giveth with one hand, they raise the standard deduction, but they taketh away by doing away with the personal exemptions. And if you have three kids in the family, as India does, that's kind of where you tip the balance and you wind up as a net negative. If you have two kids, you're probably going to be better off with the doubling of the standard deduction and losing the two personal exemptions, two kids or fewer, three or more,

you come up on the short end of the stick. And three kids is the new two. It's very trendy. Is this a thing? I'm telling you it is. I'm not following that trend, but it's a thing. It's so in among the childbearing set, you guys. Congratulations on your new personal exemption. Okay, one more from Nathan Hartwig. He writes, we've been hearing about how bad or good, depending on your class, the proposed tax plan is recently. For instance, I, a recent college grad from a middle class, small business owning family, will no longer be able to deduct my student loan interest or expensive car repairs from my federal taxes. And my teacher friends won't be able to write off classroom supplies. But I just read in a Twitter post from Topher Spiro that owners of private planes will

be able to deduct management expenses for their planes. The expenses include purchase of storage, maintenance, fueling, training and hiring of pilots and crew, flight planning, etc. With revelations like this, is there anything actually beneficial for the middle class and lower classes? Is there actually anything good for the common person in this proposal? Now, we should say that the Topher Spiro, the person referenced here, is a fellow at the Center for American Progress, which is a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C. But to the question. Right. So this is a big question because first he's starting with this private jet thing and then he's going out to middle and lower classes. So let's start with the private jet.

Let's do that. All right. So this is a provision that actually, you know, lots of liberals on Twitter, in particular, that I saw were really getting upset about last week. But then, you know, lo and behold, plot twist. Senator Sherrod Brown, a pretty liberal senator from Ohio, he is a Democrat, was advocating for this change to put this into the tax bill. Now, what happened, based on some reporting from a few other outlets, is that the IRS, up until a few years ago, exempted private jet companies from a 7.5% excise tax. Then a few years ago, they said, all right, you know what, private jet companies, you're going to pay that tax. That put everybody up in arms.

It created a whole bunch of upsetness, especially, is upsetness a word? Eh, whatever. Created a whole bunch of strife among the aviation industry. Yes. So you had people in the aviation industry who were upset about this. And so the idea was. And there was confusion in the aviation industry. Yes. So you had people in the aviation industry who were upset about this. And so the idea was... And there was confusion in the tax code, basically. Exactly.

Or in the application of the tax code. Right. People who are arguing for this change say, you know, it's a clarifying thing. One report from the New York Times I saw said that it would only affect revenues by around $500,000 over a decade. So that is fantastically small compared to a $1.5 trillion tax bill. So that is one argument that people in favor of this change might also make. So that explains that one small thing that got a lot of attention last week. I'm just spitballing, though. I'm guessing more of our listeners have student loans than private

jets. So what would the tax bill mean for student loans? Possibly. So quickly, what does it mean for student loans? Good question. The House bill, but not the Senate bill, would make what are called tuition waivers, a thing that graduate students often get when they're TAing a class. It would make that income taxable. Right now, it's not. Now, this is only on the House bill right now, but this, as we saw in our last mailbag and this one, gets people very, very upset and very worried. If you're teaching a class as a graduate student and you're getting a free tuition as a result of that, that would be treated as income for the purpose of your taxes. And you'd have to pay tax on that, even though you didn't actually get the cash. Right. And depending on where you're getting your master's degree or PhD could be,

suddenly you've got an income of $50,000 a year or something wild. And, you know, when you're in that position, quite often you are not well-moneyed. You are not making a whole lot of money that you can actually spend on groceries and rent. You're living on ramen. Right, absolutely. And so that really has a bunch of people worried. All right, so what's in it for for lower income people or the middle class? All right. So, I mean, broadly speaking, you know, we've talked a bit about this already.

It would double the standard deduction while, of course, getting rid of some exemptions. So, you know, depending on your family and your situation, that very well could help you. It could hurt you. These proposals would increase the child tax credit. But then again, you know, we should make a distinction here between the middle and lower income people because you have, what, 40 some percent of taxpayers who do not pay federal income taxes. They pay other taxes, but not federal income taxes. Currently. Currently. And they would continue to not pay federal income taxes.

Absolutely. But the question is, you know, were you to want to help those people more, you could, for example, increase the earned income tax credit, which is a refundable credit. So you would, in other words, get those people a bigger tax refund. And there are people on both sides of the aisle who would be in favor of that. So that's not a totally out of left field idea. But the point is that when you look at these tables of who would benefit and who would be in favor of that. So that's not a totally out of left field idea. But the point is that when you look at these tables of who would benefit and who would not benefit from these proposals, a large share of people in the lowest income groups would not be very affected by either of these tax proposals. Meanwhile, people at the very top and corporations, obviously,

would benefit significantly. Yes. And a bunch of middle class people could as well. All right. Another question here from Erica Lowry. My husband and I are about to build a home. We are in the process of buying land and then we'll use the land as our down payment for a construction loan to build the home. We are hoping to do a one time close and just convert. OK, this is very complicated. They're going to build a home on some land. And then she says, regarding the potentially new tax bill,

one aspect is that the mortgage interest deduction will go away for homes over $500,000 instead of a million the way it is now, correct? Since we are close to getting a home, max of about $900,000, we didn't want to miss this qualification. My question is, if we lock in the interest rate with a construction loan before this potentially new tax plan gets approved, will we make the cutoff? Or is the loan actually completed once we convert the construction loan on our mortgage in about a year or so? And guess what? There's a lot of detail there. A lot of particulars. But the big picture is that under the House bill, Erica's quite right, the mortgage interest deduction would drop from a million

dollar ceiling now to half a million dollars. And maybe most importantly, the effective date of that change would be November 2nd, 2017. So if you're out there shopping for a mortgage right now, if the House bill passes, you could be affected by it. Even if you lock in your mortgage before the bill ultimately passes, they've set a retroactive effective date for it. Now, the Senate bill doesn't change the mortgage interest deduction, and that would leave the cap at a million dollars. The Senate bill would also let you continue to buy a second home with deductible mortgage interest. So if you're out there shopping for a vacation home right now, this holiday season... All of our podcast listeners shopping for vacation. People use summer as a

verb. You might be rooting for the Senate version. All right. Now it is time for tax pod lightning round. The questions are long, but I hope the answers will be short. Oh, goodness. From Gretel Crooksmer in Tucson, Arizona, she writes, I'm a political junkie, but I cannot wrap my head around the idea that repealing the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate as part of the tax bill will raise revenue. My understanding was that if you didn't purchase coverage, you would have a penalty on your taxes, which in theory would generate tax revenue. Can you help explain? First, we have to explain she is talking about something that is in the Senate version. That's right. The Senate bill would do away with what's called the individual mandate under Obamacare. And Gretel, you are right. This is a head scratcher

because I thought it was very counterintuitive, too. But the Congressional Budget Office predicts that if you did away with the individual mandate, that is, people were no longer required to buy insurance or pay a tax penalty, some 13 million fewer people would get health insurance. And that means the government would be paying less to subsidize health insurance for people who are buying it on the Obamacare exchanges. And it turns out that those subsidies are bigger than the tax penalties they collect for people who do without. In fact, the average subsidy last year was about $3,500, whereas the tax penalty for a family is just over $2,000. So the subsidies that the government pays out are considerably larger than the tax penalties they collect from those who don't buy insurance. So fewer people take the subsidies because they're not buying insurance. Then it saves taxpayers money.

And in fact, the Senate is counting on this to save north of $300 billion over the course of a decade, money that they could then use to help pay for some of those corporate tax breaks. All right, from Jonathan Ross in Loveland, Colorado. During the campaign, I remember both Sanders and Trump talking about stopping hedge fund and other money managers from being able to claim their income under the capital gains tax rate. Haven't heard anything about this during this round of tax debates. Did I miss this or is no one talking about it anymore? Seems like an easy loophole to close and cut some of that one point five trillion dollar deficit over the next 10 years. This is about carried interest.

This is all yours. And this is Scott Horsley. Jonathan, you didn't miss it, and no one's talking about it because neither the House nor the Senate bill would make a significant change in carried interest. They do tweak it just a little bit in terms of the timing that you'd have to hold the investment to claim the lower capital gains rate. But despite the campaign promises from President Trump, neither the House nor Senate bill really makes a serious run at carried interest.

All right. And from Sean Waldron, the Alabama election is scheduled for December 12th. If Doug Jones, the Democrat, wins, how soon before he takes over the seat? I'm wondering how it will affect the Senate vote on the tax cut bill. OK, so. Yes. So as of Friday, an Alabama election official told Reuters that the Senate election on December 12th, the results probably would not be certified until December 26th at the earliest. So it would only be after that that they could potentially swear in Doug Jones were he to win or Roy Moore were he to win? Or Roy Moore, were he to win? But they're trying to pass the tax overhaul by the end of the year, before Christmas, actually. In fact,

President Trump said again today he hopes this will be a great Christmas present for the American people. I want to congratulate the House of Representatives for passing a vital and historic tax cut last week. And I'm very hopeful the Senate will do the same very soon. We're going to give the American people a huge tax cut for Christmas. Hopefully that will be a great, big, beautiful Christmas present. So if he gets his great, big, beautiful Christmas present, no problem. It doesn't matter who wins the Alabama Senate seat. However, if the timeline slips, it could get more interesting. Absolutely. Yeah. All right. More questions to come. We are going to take a quick break. And when we come back, business loopholes, incentives and also basically just like the process of how this tax legislation might move through Congress. Right after the break.

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This is Terry Gross, the host of Fresh Air. We have lots of new interviews, including with Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon, writer Amy Tan, and a sleep researcher about how not getting enough sleep might be slowly killing you. You can find Fresh Air on the NPR One app and wherever you get your podcasts. We are back. And before we get into more of your questions, I wanted to just take stock of where we are right now in the process, which is that the House passed its version last week. Now all the attention is on the Senate. It has passed out of a Senate committee. And next week, the Senate is supposed to take up its version. As we've discussed, these versions are not the same. They have some pretty dramatic differences. Can we just quickly go through some of the high points of the differences, things that might have to be hammered out later?

Sure. Yeah. So the core of the two bills is still pretty similar. That is a big corporate tax cut and getting rid of a bunch of loopholes and deductions and so on and doubling the standard deduction, getting rid of personal exemptions. Those are at the core of both bills. Now, the differences, you know, get into the details. For example, the House bill would reduce the seven individual tax brackets down to four, whereas the Senate bill would maintain the current seven brackets. So there's that. The House bill would tack on a $300 credit for if you have any non-child dependents in your family, the Senate bill would not have that. What else is there, Scott? The Senate bill sunsets most of the individual tax

provisions after 2025, which the House bill makes those permanent. The Senate bill has a different way of dealing with pass-through corporations. And that could be interesting because Senator Ron Johnson, one of the Republicans, has raised concerns about the way that's dealt with in the Senate bill. He wants some changes as a condition of getting to yes for him. We've talked about how the Senate bill addresses the individual mandate in Obamacare. The House bill is silent on that question. And also, I guess there are some deductions go away in the House version that don't go away in the Senate version, or go away in the Senate version that don't go away in the House version. Right, yeah. So for example, the treatment of what is called SALT, which is the state and local

tax deduction, the House version would allow you to deduct your property taxes from your federal taxable income, but it would not allow you to deduct the rest of your state and local taxes. The Senate bill does away with it all. Both bills take a big whack at the estate tax. The House bill ultimately does away with the estate tax altogether. The Senate bill just makes a much bigger carve out. Okay, let's move on to some more listener questions. This one comes from Thomas Ball. He writes, I was doing some research on reconciliation and came across... Oh, our listeners. I love that. Yeah, like you do. And came across the Byrd rule. He writes, it seemed to me that the By bird rule would make passing the Republican tax reform bill impossible due to the deficit it places the country in.

I've come across a few articles that address this, but no one seems to be asking people involved in the bill about it. Can you comment on the rule as it relates to the Republicans tax reform efforts? Could it stop or stymie the bill? What would need to be changed to be in compliance with the bill? Bird, bird, bird. Bird is the rule. So by reconciliation, we mean the process that the Republicans are using to fast track this and avoid a Democratic filibuster and pass the tax bill along party lines with just 50 yes votes from senators and a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Pence. Or 51 votes from senators. That tie-breaking vote from Vice President Pence. Or 51 votes from senators.

That's right. But in order to do that, they have to stay within the frame of the Byrd rule, which says you can't increase the deficit beyond 10 years. And that's why the Senate bill phases out some of these... Individual tax cuts. That's right. But they're doing so sort of with their fingers crossed behind their back because they're saying, well, we're going to write the law that these tax cuts will sunset in the end of 2025. But we all know it's going to be really hard for a

future Congress to really let that happen. And we pretty much assume that these tax cuts are going to survive. In fact, they're telling all the folks who are the beneficiaries of those tax cuts, oh, don't worry about those sunsetting. Those are going to be around. Meanwhile, they're telling all the folks who are the beneficiaries of those tax cuts, oh, don't worry about those sunsetting. Those are going to be around. Meanwhile, they're whispering to the scorekeepers at the Congressional Budget Office, oh, no, those are going to sunset so that we don't increase the deficit beyond 10 years. Okay, from Jesse Bowman, I notice all the discussion about the proposed tax plans currently coming out of the Senate and House is centered mainly around cutting individual deductions, but I haven't heard much about the deductions that will be eliminated for businesses. How do the plans propose closing

business loopholes and broadening the base to warrant a drop of the corporate rate down to 20%? The answer is it doesn't balance out. That's the short answer. I mean, when you add up all of the business tax increases and you compare them to the business tax cuts, the business tax cuts outweigh the business tax increases. And by business tax increases, that includes, for example, getting rid of a lot of these deductions. Closing of loopholes. Right. So, for example, the Tax Policy Center did this math relatively recently, and they found, you know, look, if you got rid of every single business tax deduction you possibly

could, if you wanted to balance that out with a lower corporate rate, you could only get the corporate rate down to 26 percent. However, this legislation calls for cutting it to 20 percent. Right. So, in other words, it gives more back to businesses than it takes away from them. OK. Any fun, interesting loopholes that are closed? Fun is a relative term, but yeah, I mean... No, it's actually a not very fun loophole closing because they're going to limit the deduction for meals, entertainment, and transportation. That's a very small one, but yeah, that's one. I mean, it... It's an unfun deduction to close, though.

Less fun. Fun will be less deductible. Yes, and life will be less fun for corporate types. But aside from that, you know, it gets rid of like right now businesses can deduct the interest they pay on their debt. This would reduce the amount of deductions you could take on that interest, for example. And that is one big one. That's a big one for a number of reasons, not only for the fiscal picture, but that would give businesses less incentive to finance growth through debt as opposed to equity, for example. Totally, yeah. And speaking of incentives, our last question comes from Victoria Plume in Sacramento. She writes, in addition to raising tax revenue, tax policies can shape behavior. For example, sin taxes make the consumption of alcohol and tobacco more expensive and they are meant in part to discourage consumption. What kind of behavior will be encouraged and discouraged under the new tax plan? How will the shift from a global tax system to a territorial tax system likely change the behavior of businesses? So let's do it on the individual side and on the business side. I find

the individual side more interesting, but on the business side, let's start there. She's talking about this switch to a territorial tax system. This is the big change that is happening in this tax legislation in how large corporations taxes are handled overseas. All right. So the corporate side, the idea with changing from a worldwide to a territorial tax system, that is from changing to a system where right now the U.S. has a worldwide system that puts us almost alone in the world. Most other countries have a territorial tax system. Right now, U.S. companies are taxed both on their foreign profits and the profits they make here. Under a territorial system, they would be only taxed under their profits here and not elsewhere. So one argument that people make in favor of a territorial system is that it would just put us in line with the rest of the world, and it would just make us more competitive with the rest of the world and would therefore incentivize more

businesses to take residence here. There are a lot of businesses that are sitting on giant piles of cash, like the apples of the world. There's just like giant pools of cash overseas. Right. And this tax plan also attempts to incentivize us. And I love that Victoria put it that way, because that's, you know, a lot of what taxes often do. These tax plans would incentivize companies to bring money back from overseas with a one-time tax, but a lower tax than they would otherwise pay on repatriating that money is what it's called. So that is what the people creating these tax bills hope for. Now, there is a healthy debate going on between the left and the right, especially about exactly how effective this will be. And we are not going to

settle that here, but let's talk about incentives on the individual side too. Well, we've mentioned dropping the cap on how much of your mortgage interest is deductible from a million dollars to $500,000. Not an enormous number of homeowners are in that half a million to a million dollar range, but there are some. This would in some ways put downward pressure on home prices or the incentive to buy a bigger house. I guess it's a disincentive for the second house if you use the house version of the bill, because again, the second home is the mortgage interest would no longer be deductible under the house bill. We could talk about the children, I suppose. Doing away with those

personal exemptions, I suppose, diminishes a tax incentive for having babies number three, four, and five, although the higher child credit might work against that. Right. But aside from that, you know, then speaking of things that people do very much look at their finances about, you know, there's all of that stuff, once again, about college students and graduate students. I mean, if you are considering getting your PhD and you think you might be a teaching assistant, well, when you're gaming out, how much money do I need in loans? How am I going to be able to support myself? And suddenly you have tens of thousands more in taxable income. That could very much change your financial situation. And potentially, you can imagine at the margins, and maybe then some, disincentivize people from deciding to pursue PhDs.

One other thing I've heard is that by increasing the standard deduction, you create fewer people who would want to file long-form taxes and write off things. And potentially, that would then be fewer people who would feel an incentive to make a charitable donation. Yes, the charitable community is very concerned about this, even though on the face of it, both the House and Senate bills leave the deduction for charitable contributions alone. By doubling the standard deduction, now you've got to get over that $24,000 mark and itemize deductions to make it worth your while. Charities are very concerned that people have less incentive to give to charity. So there you go. There will be more time to talk about this, but for now, I think that we should put everyone out of their misery and let them get on the road for Thanksgiving.

We will be back later this week with a special Thanksgiving edition of the regular Roundup. It'll come a day early on Wednesday. In the meantime... With basting tips? I have so many tips, but I don't think anybody actually wants to hear all of my cooking thoughts. I imagine it will be heavy on the turkey pardoning talk. Just a guess. There is a turkey pardon happening soon. In the meantime...

And let's just say that turkey better be appreciative. If not, there are going to be some mean tweets directed at that bird. Tweet, tweet, tweet. In the meantime, keep up with our coverage on NPR.org, on your local public radio station, and on the NPR One app. One of Us is always on up first every weekday morning. Like me, tomorrow. And if you're in the D.C. area, we have a live show coming up for you in January at the Warner Theater in partnership with our local public radio station, WAMU. You can find more information and get tickets online at nprpresents.org.

That's nprpresents, all one word, dot org. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House. And I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. Thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.