The tax policy institute is fairly partisan and frequently distorts data to support their agenda. Please do your homework!
Well I guess I am one of the 6% that paid more....and so are all my friends that work in Aerospace....No more Trump for me!!!
8
Even though I live in an “affordable” town in CA, in a modest house, my overall tax liability increased $400, But because of the withholding issues mentioned by many others, I owed $2k, instead of breaking even as we usually do. The timing just happens to be devastating because of unexpected health expenses. My wealthier friends have much larger bills, but also more ability to pay them. I imagine that speed with which this bill was passed prevented better education of taxpayers and the shutdown’s impact on the IRS didn’t help. Don’t expect any celebration in my house.
7
This is silly because it is not a matter of opinion but rather fact. All you do is pull out your 2017 and 2018 Form 1040 and look at the Total Tax line and compare. How hard is that? In my case, my total tax decreased by 71%. I think the new tax law is fantastic. It is excellent for me and excellent for the economy. Thank you, President Trump!
2
My taxes increased for the following reasons:
1. SALT capped itemized deductions. Deductions are way down as a result.
2. Individual Exclusion was eliminated
3. Taxes on investment income and capital gains are unchanged.
3
I am struck by the volume of distress from California, many of whose residents are receiving higher tax bills in large part resulting from the limitation of the mortgage interest and real estate tax deductions. These tax deductions are of course subsidies provided by the tax system for homeowners, and the higher the value, the greater the tax benefit.
The values are driven further skyward by a lack of supply, as well as by the cost of compliance with unduly selective and restrictive local and state policies. Since there is no longer a full taxpayer subsidy of these costs, it seems as though paying the “fair share” is hitting a little too close to home.
2
I am a tax pro in California and I strongly disagree with the premise of this article. Nearly all of my clients are paying more this year, from low to the 5%. Some have lost deductibility of expenses up into the $75,000 range. Tax bill doubled. On the other hand, if any money from corporations makes it into the taxable range, rate dropped from 38% to 21%.
14
I wounder why that would be? It couldn't be how it has been reported in the Times now could it?
I calculated how the tax cut would effect our family the day it was announced. And yes, it was a cut.
We did get a cut but it was a rounding error: around 1% of our total tax bill (not rate!), far less than the 50% increase in the national debt we’re going to be paying for in the future.
4
Kudos to the NYT. Reading all the posts, it is easy to see this is a very contentious issue. Regardless who is subsidizing whom, the evidence that you share seems clear - that on whole, the average person did get a modest pay cut. However as I read your article, the point of the story is that people simply don't believe it. That the normally liberal NYT writes about democrats spinning the message of a republican tax cut is refreshing. I expect it at Fox but not from you. Thank you for straight forward reporting. I am tired of reading spin from both sides.
4
@tBone
Clearly, most of commenters are sharing their bias that the NY Times exposed. Some even sound like they doubt the veracity of the numbers reported--perhaps another conspricary?
One more point: tax cuts by definition will differentially benefit those who pay (more) taxes.
2
Last year my three-person family got a refund. This year, despite reporting slightly less income overall, we owe $4k. Some tax cut.
1
@Jen Thompson
Please, Jen. Refunds by themselves are meaningless. Compare your actual tax from year to year.
2
@Jen ThompsonYour comment helpfully illustrates why the public gets this wrong. The size of your refund is irrelevant. A refund is just the government returning to you an interest-free loan you made to the government. The amount of the refund is determined not by what your tax rate is but by how many exemptions you claim, etc. If you went back and compared the taxes you paid last year to the taxes you paid this year, you’d probably find, like 90% of all taxpayers, that your taxes decreased this year. I hope this explanation clarifies things for you.
2
The problem is that even though they brand it as a tax cut, unless accompanied by a decrease in expenditures, it is no such thing. They continue to run up bills on the good faith and credit of the USA.
3
Your own chart shows that the majority of those who needed a tax cut the most - those with lower incomes - did NOT get a tax cut!
3
@Kathy
Um, that is the group that paid no Federal income taxes in either 2017 or 2018. In fact, even those who already had paid nothing got a bit of a bump in though the EITC.
Take off the shades.
1
We are a double income no child couple so the deductions we can take are few. Those were eliminated for the most part. Yes I did see a slight, less than $50 per month, increase in my check but as I withheld 1 insread of 0, because by the time the tables came out they were pretty much useless, I got completely hosed on taxes. Instead of receiving a refund, I now owe the government over $1500. Therefore what I received overall per check does not balance out what I ended up owing, thanks to the elimination of the deductions I could take. So while I got a tax cut, I didn't really. That's why people don't feel a difference. We are going beyond the pure economics of taxes into political policy. When people don't feel a tax cut, when they feel they owe more, true or not, that is a losing political issue.
3
I see one major problem with this article. The numbers from the Tax Policy Center are presented here as "this percentage of people got a tax cut" - as if it were presenting actual after-the-fact data. But that is not really an accurate description of the study. Because the study is not based on any actual data about any real people; rather it is based on a model of a hypothetical "average person". Which means that the results are only as accurate as the assumptions that were made when creating the model. I have no doubt that SOME middle class people received a tax cut. But it is quite obvious that many others did not. And to claim that 70-80% did seems like a stretch.
9
We have a middle class income, maybe a little above average. Both our 2018 income and our 2018 taxes (Federal and State both) went up slightly; but that alone doesn't say much. More meaningfully, our 2018 effective tax rate (which is essentially the percentage our taxes are of our adjusted gross income) went up by 2.1% (above 2017's effective tax rate). Can anyone explain how this is not a tax increase, however modest?
I'm not complaining because my taxes went up, though. I'm much more concerned that taxes were drastically reduced on corporations and wealthy individuals while the deficit explodes and our infrastructure crumbles (to say nothing about climate change), which will come back to haunt us (more accurately, the young) far more than a measly 2.1% tax rate increase.
7
I can tell you without any misleading data or surveys, if you live in high income/property tax state such as California, and own a home and are in the moderately high tax bracket, there was NO tax cut. There was a huge tax increase. Over $31,000 in property and income tax deduction loss this year compared to the previous year.
13
Think I paid less taxes? Hah. I know I paid more. We had $40,000 in deductions until this year when we had $24,000. (Numbers rounded down for convenience). Yes we paid more taxes. I feel someone thinks we are fools.
13
My AGI was within 1.5% of 2017. My taxable income went up by 14%. My actual 2018 tax bill was 44% higher than for 2017. I'm just an ordinary retired person, solid middle class, being taxed on my social security, my IRA withdrawals, and capital gains. I live in a city with very high real estate taxes. I got killed by the SALT restrictions and apparently by everything else. I'm in the 22% bracket, whereas someone I know very well who has who knows how many times greater income than I, is in the 14% bracket. Maybe this article's data is reliable. All I know is that tax reform stinks for me. Plus the extra money I'm giving the feds pays for policies designed and implemented by meatheads.
14
A better measure would be tax liability divided by AGI as it smooths out raises, withholdings, and income fluctuations. Our percentage dropped 2.5 points. Son's dropped 5 points.
1
To anyone who complains that Democratic messaging on the tax cut was unfair, let me offer you a few choice phrases to consider: "death panels"; "mission accomplished"; "Harry and Louise"; "welfare queen."
14
@James Grosser
Repeal and replace.
Total denuclearization.
Mexico will pay for it.
Birth certificate.
Seth Rich.
Pizza Parlors.
Alternative facts.
Trickle down economics.
12
You missed the real reason why people don’t think they got a tax cut ... it’s because in many instances their tax refund was smaller or they might even have had to pay this year. They aren’t doing the net math. They are just comparing refunds.
4
I think that a lot of Americans are accustomed to getting refunds. It's money that they use for a vacation or to pay some expensive bills. When the withholding was changed people were not aware or they were but didn't realize that that was the tax cut.
In my opinion the problem with this overhaul is that the benefits to the middle and working classes are temporary while those for corporations and the richest are permanent. The other issue is that each time there is a tax cut user fees increase, programs are cut, and state and local taxes increase. Therefore any tax cut at the federal level is more than cancelled by increases elsewhere.
6
Households with less than $30,000 clearly didn't get a tax cut; for almost 70% of them, there was no cut (or an increase), and these people are the ones suffering most from the distribution of wealth towards the already-wealthy.
Workers making $30k or less also make up about half of all workers.
You (probably) shouldn't bunch up people making less than $30k and pitting them against four separate demographics of people making $30,000 - $100,000 and pretending they hold equal weight in the economy. They don't.
7
Most, if not all, people below 30K paid no Federal Income TAX.
They did pay SSI, property tax, and states taxes, if applicable.
But the tax cut was for Federal taxes. Nothing else.
2
My husband and I are CA Democrats who are fortunate enough to own a small home, a 93-year old fixer that we bought a few years ago in order to have some stability due to the insane rental market in the SF Bay Area. We are also voters who, like the majority of the Bay Area, absolutely did not vote for Trump. Due to SALT, our taxes definitely went up this year. We would pay HALF our wages in taxes if it meant health care for all, and insured that there were guaranteed jobs and housing for the homeless. But the thought that our taxes went up to buy an extra yacht or luxury goods for billionaires fills me with rage. I’m especially angry because while CA is the 5th largest economy in the WORLD, the Orange Oligarch is thanking us by stealing from us all, while his cronies enact his racist and classist agendas. CA contributes more than its fair share to the GDP but we don’t have enough governmental representation.
12
Inflation consumes most of the tax savings after the second year for taxpayers under $250,000. Until I'm making a million dollars, I don't want tax cuts. I want a revenue- expenditure policy that improves productivity (and, in turn, wages) and quality of life.
2
My family and I fall into one of those "very specific and over all pretty unusual situations" and are paying more taxes. Not the kind of special you want to feel. I wanted to share our situation as an example of how the new tax policy is affecting middle class families in areas with a high cost of living. My partner and I are full-time working parents with one child (and some college loan debt), and we are paying more taxes than we have in the last few years. I'll lay it out for you: Our AGI increased by about 4% from 2017 to 2018, but our taxable income increased by about 30%. How? We bought a condo in 2013 for about $700,000. Expensive for elsewhere in the country, but very modest for the Silicon Valley area. We don't make enough to be affected by the AMT. We pay enough in mortgage interest and property taxes to itemize, but now, our state and property tax deductions are capped at $10,000. There is no more personal exemptions, and the $2000 child tax credit doesn't come close to making up the difference. In the end our tax bill increased by about 14% compared with last year. Is we the demographic that Republicans felt could handle a bit of a tax increase? I don't mind paying taxes and in fact am happy to pool my resources with others to be able to improve our schools and road, support the armed forces, etc. but it doesn't feel great when I'm paying more and the uber-wealthy are getting huge tax breaks.
13
What Americans need to face is that anyone whose child cannot go to college without taking on crushing debt should thank the Republicans for the "tax cuts for the middle class" that they have successfully hawked over the last 50 years, because prior to the "Regan Revolution" federal taxes subsidized most colleges, including to some degree private colleges. Yes, most if not all colleges still enjoy some degree of federal subsidies still, but before all this tax slashing on behalf the wealthy, any truly deserving kid who was willing to work could get a good education at a reasonable cost, and most students had little or no debt when they received their sheepskin.
In other words, whatever the debt that your or your kid has to assume in order to get a college education, is exactly what your tax increase has been over the past 50 years of so. And most of those tax cuts went into the pockets of folks who can easily afford any kind of tuition.
Check it out if you don't believe me. Those were halcyon days for young people. All that is necessary is for those days to return is for rich people to pay their fair share. Unfortunately, they seem to be the only citizens who seem to have a voice in this current version democracy and they have made it clear that they don't care about anyone else's kids but their own.
7
Our taxable income went down $2000 and our federal taxes paid increased by $500. This resulted from the loss of SALT deductions and because the $500 credit (for an elderly parent) did not offset the loss of $12,000 in exemptions. As the article points out, it also reflects our income coming from taxable salaries and pensions.
5
I think it’s pretty funny that today we learn that 60 profitable Fortune 500 companies avoided all Federal income taxes in 2018 with some actually getting rebates and the focus of this article is a modest tax savings for many Americans. Amazon had a -1% rate.
6
For a state like California where property tax and mortgage interest payments have previously been a major part of itemized deductions, eliminating these deductions, along with other changes in what may be deducted, means that there is no longer any benefit received from itemizing deductions. This year my itemized deductions would have been about $49,000 under the previous tax laws, but due to the tax cuts, my itemized deductions were now below the $26,000 standard deduction for a jointly filed return. So I used the standard deduction and my taxable income increased by $23,000, thus increasing my tax bill by about $7,000 over what it would have been under the previous tax laws. I am sure that many taxpayers who previously itemized deductions find that under the new tax laws most of their previously itemized deductions are no longer allowed and so their tax bill is increased under the new tax laws for this reason.
17
For a state like Caiifornia where property tax and mortgage interest payments have prviouslyu been a major part of itemized deductions, elimminating these deductions, along with other chages in what may be deducted, means that there is no longer any benefit rewceived from itemizing deducions. This year my itemized deductions would have been about $49,000 under the previous tax laws, but due to the tax cuts my itemized deductions were now below the $26,000 standard deduction for a jointly filed return. So I used the standard deduction and my taxable income increased by $23,000, thus increasing my tax bill by about $7,000 over what it would have been under the previous tax laws. I am sure that many taxpayers who previously itemized deductions find that under the new tax laws most of their previously itemized deductions are no longer allowed and so their tax bill is increased under the new tax laws for this reason.
Listen. We know companies like Amazon paid zero corporate taxes last year because they told us. That sounds fundamentally unfair to most Americans as the CEO is world’s richest man.
You’re right most don’t believe their personal taxes went down. I know for myself and my wife they went up a lot. We both work in corporate America in California doing run of the mill technology related work. Not self employed. Not really special circumstances except being tech workers like millions of others. We asked our accountant what was the affect of the tax law and she said “easy” and clicked a row on a her spreadsheet and said the Republican tax changes cost me $20,000 this year. My jaw hit the floor.
My guess is that the Republicans know that California is fundamentally unwindable in 2020 so removing tax changes that make it livable isn’t something they need to worry about. If you didn’t vote last election (and I did and not for this president) this is what you get. You may not like the federal government (and who does) but as you saw, by choosing poorly things can always keep getting worse. Vote people!
5
@JH
As a fellow Californian, I'm inclined to say that some of us should move to Texas, North Carolina, or Florida.
Let's build a big new beautiful Blue wall.
1
My taxes went up dramatically and I am not happy. I don’t mind paying my fair share, but as a single person and with the SALT tax restriction, I feel robbed.
The Republicans have a plan: price you out of your home with this tax, and some investment vehicle will buy your home, and then you become the renter. They control the housing market, the price of homes and the rental market. The only significant investment will be lost to Americans. That is the ultimate “Make America Great Again” plan of the Republicans. Along with gutting Social Security and healthcare, they will kill this country economically. Every last dime.
The Red states say they are “subsidizing” NY with the SALT tax, which is wrong. Let me point out the not so obvious if you haven’t spend time on both Red and Blue states. It costs considerably more to live in these Blue states. We have more traffic, more roads to upkeep, and higher cost of goods and services. To increase my taxes dramatically has cost me plenty more than I can afford.
The US IRS has $8 billion dollars of tax money owed to them from people that do not file. They know who owes it but do not have the personnel or resources to go after them. That will expire this year. Perhaps if the IRS was properly funded more revenue would be collected from those who owe rather than targeting the Blue states. But then again, vengeance is Trump’s middle name.
3
A. Some Democrats portrayed the Trump tax cut as an increase of middle class taxes when in fact it was a small decrease.
B. Republicans portrayed the Trump tax cuts as a significant reduction of taxes for everyone, when in fact the bulk of the decrease went to a small fraction of taxpayers, the wealthy. They further portrayed the tax cut as paying for itself, which it has not done, and which most economists would have predicted it would not do. A large tax benefit also went to corporations. Republicans claimed that wages would go up as companies invested their tax savings. Most of the savings went to stock buy-backs, which benefit only wealthy shareholders. This also came as no surprise to economists.
Which is the worse deception, A or B?
2
well.... some of us are not buying it because it isn't true. My tax rate increased.
6
I am in my 30s, white collar, make a little over $100k/year, live in a purple state, and recently purchased a home in a metro suburb. I crunched the numbers myself, and found that the GOP tax cuts cost my family around $1,000.
Many of my friends and coworkers in their 30s who have bought houses here are in the same boat. The loss of the individual deduction coupled with the limit on itemized deductions hurt those of us who pay mortgages and contribute to charities.
That said, even if I'd gotten a small increase, passing more than a trillion dollars in debt to the next generation so large corporations could do more stock buybacks feels borderline criminal, and I hope Democrats continue to make a big deal about it. Someone is eventually going to have to pay for all this, and it won't be Donald Trump.
9
We definitely received a tax increase. I even popped our numbers into 2017 Turbotax to verify. We were in the unfortunate SALT sweet spot, with a high state income tax but below the AMT limits. That said, the biggest crime of the new tax code was financing unnecessary tax breaks to the ultra-rich with debt, increasing the future tax burden for the next generation.
4
Its hard to be enthusiastic.when someone takes out a loan in my name and I have to start paying for it.
The individual cuts have a sunset in 9 years. All these cuts are 100% paid for by deficit spending/voodoo economics. Individual cuts mostly go to the highest earners.
Given the Party Of Trump's dismaying embrace of outright lies and the President's constant, egregious, easily refuted, lies, is "Democratic messaging" really the root of public skepticism?
The Republican drumbeat that "Obama raised your taxes" wasn't and couldn't be true. (Congress, not the President, sets tax rates) But it may have reduced their credibility. President Trump's reflexive dishonesty has certainly degraded public discourse. Tax lie fatigue must have some effect.
Our family's taxes didn't rise during Obama's terms. I checked, Our Federal rate was 17% in 2008, 2009, 2012 and 2016. And fell to 14% for 2018, mostly because of the doubled standard deduction. I didn't favor the cuts, and expect to have to pay for them.
1
I compared my effective tax rate -- which I compute as our taxes owed / actual income (not AGI) and it was 1/2 of 1 % less in 2018 than 2017. Did I get a tax break? Yes. Did we have gobs of money to invest like the corporations with their tax breaks? No. I would rather the money go to infrastructure but not to rich people/corporations getting the over inflated contracts.
2
My taxes went down very little and we are in 6 figures. The benefit was that filing taxes was much easier. Previously I itemized. In 2017 I had about $18,000 in deductions There was no need to itemize in 2018 since the standard deduction increased a significant amount though offset by the elimination of personal exemptions. Net result was that I spent far less time preparing taxes and that was a good thing.
1
We are Democrats in CA who got a tax cut. I don’t think the climate change denial, kids in cages, Brett Kavanaugh, etc was worth it. I’d happily pay more taxes to not put up with this.
149
Sure, some of us got a "tax cut" that amounts to a couple dollars a month. The wealthy are the ones who benefit from this tax scam, and the budget is what suffers. We are going into debt to give money to those who need it the least instead of fixing the myriad of issues that plague our nation. Worst of all, in 2025, the tax cuts expire, which is great political timing for the Republican party. This entire saga has shown that the right in this country are not the fiscal hawks they so claim to be; robbing Peter to pay Paul isn't fiscally conservative, it's a cheap trick to keep lobbyist dollars flowing. The sad truth is that the Fox News faithful will gladly empty their pockets to hear that they're "winning" and that liberals are "losing." This front loaded tax cut is just a carrot on a stick to goad the gullible back to the polls just in time for the next scam. There is no free lunch and we'll all pay for this in time.
148
@Chris - Analysis by the budget office showed that the elimination of the SALT deduction mostly impacted the top 1% in income. Unless your income is very high, the reduction of the top bracket from 39.8% to 37% did not offset this. A household making $600K who was deducting $60K in tax paid is now paying more, not less.
2
@Chris
Important to note that only the individual tax cut is set to expire in 2025. The Republicans' Redistribution of Wealth to the Wealthy Act of 2017 enshrined the corporate tax cut as permanent so as to garner the backing of the Sheldon Adelson's of the world, who are enjoying hundreds of millions if not billions in annual tax savings while the rest of us get crumbs over which we are supposed to proclaim our gratitude. Meanwhile, our children and grandchildren will be paying for the decadence of the rich for their entire miserable lives. Speaking to the premise of the article, this is the reason many are failing to see any particular personal benefit in this tax plan. The thousand dollars I saved in 2018 pales in comparison to the $2B Adelson and his ilk are using to buy another airplane or megayacht (or two or three). My tax savings is going to groceries and diapers. Thanks for nothing, Republicants.
7
Yes, our household did get a tax cut. My wife and I are both retirees that receive pensions, social security, and have significant reserves in our retirement accounts. We both have ample amounts withheld from our monthly benefits. In our case, the state came out about the same as in past years with a net refund to us. This year our Federal refund increased by approximately $400. Big deal.
It comes out to $7.69 a week. For this we are blowing over a $1 trillion hole in the deficit? We didn't ask for it. We don't need it. We have enough to live comfortably, without saddling our children with additional debt in their future.
198
I don’t think that the loss of medical deductions (especially for fixed income retired people) and the loss of unreimbursed work expenses are taken into account by this article.
1
Calling all this nonsense a 'tax cut' is like saying something good happened because your credit card company lowered your minimum monthly payment - all that has happened is the payment for the services needed to keep our nation safe and well has been deferred, in a manner resulting in greater accrued interest and no significant benefit other than a fleeting one to those with zero need of it. Shame on us for allowing this event to be discussed in a way that pretends the whole tax cut charade has ever been anything other than a fairy tale told by the cynical to the ignorant.
3
I got the biggest tax refund in years...
Sure, the Democrats did a "very good job" with their dishonest messaging. But that's not unexpected as it is, sadly, politics today.
However, if the supposedly unbiased and neutral media had done their job and reported on the tax cuts truthfully - on just the facts - and pushed back on this dishonesty with any actual or honest analysis - at the very least challenging the Dems on their incorrect talking points - then perhaps perception wouldn't be so skewed.
Instead, most in the MSM chose to provide the Democrats a megaphone for their dishonest messaging. And they wonder why they are derided as "fake news..."
Please talk about the promised postcard tax filing, props included. How many pages did it take you to file?
Democrats always pretend we dont have a progressive tax system. It helps their party to sell fear and jealousy. It is why the failed idea of socialism and communism appeal to today's dems.
1
“Face It: You (Probably) Got a Tax Cut”
Face It: Your tax refund is smaller than in previous years. I know mine was.
The tax schedule chabge was applied for 9 months in 2018
this year its in effect for the entire year
Expect your 2019 return to be even lower
1
Nothing will make trump supporters vote blue faster than messing with their tax returns. My sister in law (conservative) just called to tell me how mad she is that she owes 7k. In her own words, “I hate trump”. I said welcome to the club 😂
5
Who is kidding who here? Let’s try a verified survey of 2017 vs. 2018 of actual tax payments before assuring the middle class that they paid reduced taxes, as the true costs necessary to pay for our government and services is kicked a couple of years down the line. A tax savings did not happen for this retired middle class citizen. For me the tax cut is a lie. My deductions alone for me and wife for 2017 were $28,000 ($17,000 alone for medical). Then for 2018 we lost our $8,400 exemption for living in the land of the free. Bottom line, federal taxes went up for me $2,700, a 45% increase. My state taxes as a function of federal also shifted up proportionally. Angry, you bet. Some people rob with a gun, some with a pen and some with cons and lies like our Quisling president and his faith column Republicans. Quisling president, show us your taxes. What are you hiding? Like we don’t know that you paid less than I did. Lie, cheat, steal, game the system, it’s the American way. 2020, 2020, 2020.
1
Trump, speaking to a large group of friends at Mar-a-lago right after the tax cut was passed: “You all just got a lot richer!”
This says it all.
3
My taxes doubled.
1
Face it: this is gaslighting as far as I can see. The fact that my computed taxable income rose from 79% of my AGI for 2017 to 89.6% of my AGI for 2018 (with barely any changes in income sources or possible deductions) is in no way the product of some "liberal" brainwashing plot. Also I doubt that the average person is so stupid that they cannot understand the difference between total tax liability and what you have chosen to withhold or pay in estimated tax payments.
2
I did my '18 taxes using turbo tax - once finished, it totaled my effective tax rate for 2018 at 12.23%, for '17 my tax rate was 13.23% and in '16 my tax rate was 13.54%. It was a tax reduction as they promised, but not of the magnitude the present administration was touting. But worst of all, I probably paid more in taxes than the current president of the USA.
1
Stupid question: did Trump get a tax cut? Oh, right. We will NEVER know.
2
Last year, everyone got something added to their paychecks because they messed around with the withholding tables and gave everyone a false sense new found money. Now we are revisiting the withholding tables, taking off deductions and fully understanding that it doesn't matter to have a mortgage, pay high property taxes, pay high child care costs or donate.
The $24K in Itemized Deductions worksheet is a slap in the face to younger generations. Nice job screwing us over.
2
Like any voter. We look to our own taxes as how this tax cut affected us. In my household, our income decreased because there was a bump in the income for a required cashout of time off at work. This bump put our income tax bracket to a higher level. This year's income was lower than about 10K but the tax rates although lower produced the same tax payment.
How is this possible, with the absence of SALT, the itemized deductions did not go to the level of the standard deductions. If a dual income family with no kids have lesser deductions including no credit for any other activity, owning a house has become useless in this tax bracket even though we fall below the max deductible for mortage interest.
We got screwed as taxpayers but this article seems to focus on the whole. They should do a state by state comparison on how this affects each citizen of each state. You will see the vast difference in how the tax cut affected each US citizen.
Nothing new here. My husband and I always had additional $ taken out to avoid the sticker shock on April 15. Some years still had a small bill at the end of the year, others we received a small return. We are in our 70's now with retirement income. Through planning , we have a small tax requirement. We are considered lower middle income. Do not depend on the IRS tax scheduled withholding. Use your experience.
1
If you get a wage and file a W2, you have lost out. If you live from investments, you win. It is that simple. Oh, and live in the mid-West or deep south. Alalbama is great if you want to save on tax.
I received a tax cut only because I received an income cut. However, I did not decide to buy a larger yacht or a weekend home in Aspen.
I did, however, accept that tens of millions of my tax dollars will be squandered shuttling a faux-billionaire back and forth from the White House to his privately owned resort properties and campaign rallies that could have been staged by Leni Riefenstahl; mobilizing the military at the border with Mexico and ‘building a wall’; feeding the most bloated military budget on Earth; subsidizing farmers being driven to bankruptcy by an idiotic ‘trade war’; paying Department of Justice lawyers to challenge the validity of duly enacted Congressional legislation in federal court, while defending patently illegal executive edicts; and other irrational, profligate expenditures.
I also pretty well gave up on the notion that my tax dollars will be dedicated to the common good, for things like a rational healthcare system; renewed infrastructure; development of renewable energy and a strategy to cope with climate change; responding to mounting crises like gun violence; not to mention addressing the exploding federal deficit and national debt.
Tax cut or no tax cut, I’m resigned to the fact this nation is in decline and that it’s burning up unimaginable sums of tax revenues and borrowed money on self-destructive, counterproductive, irrational public policies; at the behest of a handful of billionaire donors to the two dominant political parties.
2
If my memory is correct the Joint Committee on Taxation (6 Republicans, 4 Democrats), and the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office issued a joint analysis indicating that most folks making over $75,000 would end up paying higher taxes over the 10-year time frame regardless of whether we got a tax cut in one particular year. This is the reason the bill is unpopular with me, and the reason I call it a tax increase and not a tax cut. Some folks say it should be skewed toward the rich because they pay the most, i.e., it's their money we're giving back. But it's not their money; it's not money at all--it's debt. And we (all the taxpayers) have to borrow money to pay the country's bills--and pay it back with interest--just to make the obscenely rich even more obscenely rich. I don't know if the JCT and CBO analysis took this into account, but it's even more of a tax increase to me and another reason I don't like the GOP tax increase.
The author's notion that "most people would probably welcome a $780 windfall" - about $2 a day - pretty much says it all. Do the authors and Republicans think Americans believe that two bucks and change is somehow a "windfall"? In what universe?
And this discussion masks a much, much larger problem. The ballyhooed tax cut is actually the same strategy casino's use when they announce the slot machines are now paying 10% more. They do not mention - as Trump and his cohorts do not - that this marginal potential benefit actually disguises a vast increase in debt, that will have to be repaid.
Truth in advertising would require this article to document the increase in federal debt load most working taxpayers have been handed with this unconscionable slight of hand. And, a reminder that Chevron, Apple and other corporations paid far less taxes this year than you did. There's your trillion dollar "windfall".
1
I'm self-employed, and my husband works for a corporation. He finally received a raise this year (after stagnant wages for the past 5). My business is also doing well. We paid less this year than in the past. Primarily because of the QBI (qualified business income) credit that seems to be targeted at reducing the tax bill for sole proprietors. (applause). I still would rather the taxes that we DID pay go to an Administration that knew how to use our tax dollars wisely and for the benefit of the country as a whole. Instead, they continue to slash social safety nets, erode the public education system, destroy environmental and food safety protections, ignore much-needed infrastructure improvements and vilify the working poor and immigrants. All the while, robbing the treasury (and leaving a monstrous deficit) to benefit themselves and their criminally wealthy cohorts. November 2020 can't get here fast enough.
2
It was a substantial tax cut for my small business, and it led directly to hiring and investing in new ventures. By contrast, my taxes went up 40% under Obama... which led to zero hiring.
Partisan posturing aside, that's the way it works out here in the real world.
1
Let's just simplify things and look at how it is impossible that most people got a tax cut.
You do get a $12,000 standard deduction but you lose over $4,000 in individual exemptions. So that is about an $8,000 Standard deduction, which is actually $1,600 higher than what you got last year. But that is not the only problem because you lose the same over $4,000 for each child. So one child and you are already in the red even if you are married but worse if you are not.
No, the AMT did not negate the benefit of the SALT deduction -- it merely reduced it somewhat.
This is probably the most unpopular tax cut in history. When in history has it ever been unpopular for the government to exercise its power to reduce taxes instead of increase them? It should have been welcome. The reason this bill was so unpopular is mostly because Democrats were able to effectively play on people's jealousy of their fellow citizens who are doing even better than they are and to mislead people into thinking they weren't getting a tax cut (which as this article proves was not true in most cases). There has also been a successful effort to make the savings seem like nothing. According to this article, the middle fifth family saves $780 a year because of the cut. That may not sound like a lot to this relatively affluent reader base, but for a family that's living largely paycheck to paycheck, and trying to sock aways whatever it can for retirement, that is a nice little boost. Maybe not cause for a major celebration, but certainly a welcome event.
1
Why in the world would you use $10 as the amount that qualifies as a tax cut? That's barely a rounding error...
I will never understand why people complain about getting a smaller refund. So you're upset that you DIDN'T give the government a BIGGER interest free loan? Seriously?
3
When I get $10 added to my weekly pay every week and have to have payroll deduct an extra $400 a month, that is not a tax cut.
1
No, I did not because of the cap on SALT. But frankly I don't care if I pay more taxes; I just wish the government would use my tax dollars to pay for needed services, infrastructure, and addressing climate change.
3
So, I am facing it and we are ponying up an extra 8% in total taxes in 2018. I don't know about others living in New York, California or states with higher state & local income taxes but we got killed. The SALT deduction cap was what did it.
I got a tax cut, yes, but as an itemizer, I view it as peanuts. Considering that the cap on itemized deductions was removed (one of many sops to the top earners), it is also easy to see where the big dollar cuts occurred. So now there is 'no money'for roads, mass trans, education, or health care -- and that is much too high a price to pay.
3
If I get a one percent tax cut and the top one percent get a 20 percent tax cut. Then no I don’t consider my 1 percent a cut. Is that wrong?
3
@Steven Kozak
Yes, that's wrong. Did you pay less than you did before? If so, it's a cut. Whatever impact the tax cuts had on anyone else is irrelevant. Unless, of course, you can show how someone else getting a cut or hike in taxes impacts you. Does it?
@Steven Kozak
Yes it is wrong. Whether or not you got a cut is quite independent of what the other guy got. And I don't think any individuals got a 20 percent cut, so not sure what you're talking about there.
I have no idea whether I got a tax cut or not. I was laid off at the beginning of January 2018 and was no longer paying for insurance etc and thus my severance check was not in line with the paycheck I had been getting (salary was the same). I didn't work again until September and that was part time. What I do know is last year we received a nice refund. This year we owed by five figures. So it doesn't "feel" like a tax cut.
3
My situation is somewhat unique but the Trump tax ‘cuts’ probably cost me in the low five figures in extra federal taxes. We remodeled two adjacent houses that had been in the family since 1930, had to prepay a year’s worth of property taxes (it’s complicated), and got shafted by limited SALT deductions. And my extra taxes didn’t help the federal government do anything useful. Instead, the tax cuts mostly went to the rich and corporations that didn’t need the money and didn’t do much productive with their windfall. A waste all the way around.
5
@Michael Tyndall
If your problem is with SALT, take it up with Sacramento. The rest of the country shouldn't have to subsidize over taxed states.
I received less of a refund this year than previous. Maybe I payed less over the year but I claim zero allowances. I simply don’t make enough to invest the money to justify claiming one.
2
There were too may moving parts for most people to make sense of what actually happened to their tax returns. The tax code is a layer cake -- one for ordinary income and then another for capital gains and most taxpayers don't have capital gains. Anyone concluding what happened based on whether they got a refund or had to pay is focusing on the TIMING of payments and not the underlying actual tax.
If you use software, try inputting you 2018 tax data into the 2017 software. That will tell you whether you are better or worse off. Since the tax code is built around an average and traditional tax profile, there are bound to be those who fall through the cracks like single, home-owning taxpayers in high tax/high cost states. (Seriously, a $12,000 standard deduction doesn't cover much, especially if you also have to pay for your own healthcare.)
2
I got a tax cut. I knew I would get a tax cut going in. However, I did not get a particularly meaningful tax cut (and I expected that going in as well). My tax cut may have been more meaningful if the cost of living had stayed the same, or gone down, but it did not for me. The price of many goods and services that I buy regularly went up by varying percentages (e.g. - gas, food, healthcare). In cases where my costs went down, it was generally because I actively sought better pricing from different suppliers for certain items (e.g. - cell phones and cable services). Considering all the other moving parts that go into making American life affordable, it shouldn't really surprise anyone that many in the middle class didn't notice such a meager tax cut for them. Especially when corporations and the top 1% were reaping most of the benefits, and we were all forced to shoulder more debt.
2
The headline of this article is misleading. I live in California. Because of the $10,000 cap on state tax and mortgage deductions, my federal taxes nearly doubled, adding thousands of dollars. I am not poor, but I am not near the upper 1% either. Many more Californians were hit by this than your article suggests. This tax increase was meant to punish the large and well-run states, like California, period.
8
My taxes went up. I calculated using TurboTax for 2017 and 2018. My 2017 version showed a few hundred dollars less than my 2018 version.
3
It would be hard to argue that this tax cut is sound economic policy. Creating a trillion dollar increase in the deficit through tax cuts while the economy is strong is a danger to our nation. In no way is it designed to promote the general welfare of the people. It doesn't matter who received a tax break.
1
The only way to really tell if you got a tax cut is to calculate your taxes on your detailed 2018 income on this years law, and then also calculate the same 2018 income on the prior law. If you have both 2018 and 2017 tax programs, its pretty easy to do. Then report out!
Are you kidding me? NO tax cut for me.
Our family did not get a tax cut in 2018. Capping the deduction for state and local taxes at ten thousand dollars reduced our total deductions by nearly fifteen thousand dollars, and increased our taxes by twenty-five hundred dollars. I predicted this would be the result for us and many families like ours -- in letters and messages to our Republican Congresswoman, who responded with pablum and gibberish. She was not re-elected, and was supplanted by a Democrat, first to take the seat in years. Trump lied in claiming he would not benefit from his tax law, and the wealthiest got ever more wealthy, the rest of us got peanuts or increases, while national debt grew and grew.
2
Apart from perceptions, the point of this article is irrelevant. The country is hardly over-taxed and it certainly shouldn't have borrowed another $1.5 trillion to subsidize more tax cuts. Not to mention the fact that over the next several years, the benefits of those tax cuts will accrue disproportionately to the wealthy. Meanwhile, nothing's getting fixed and debt levels are rising in almost every category, from the federal deficit to student loans, car loans and credit cards.
6
@Innocent Bystander
Really? You think it's irrelevant that people have an incorrect perception as to a policy that has a substantial impact on all US wage earners and that this incorrect perception was the result of a misinformation campaign waged by democrats? That seems a little unreasonable. We can have a conversation about whether the tax policy is good policy or bad policy, but the fact that people are by and large incorrect about how the policy affects them is most definitely a matter of public concern.
We paid appreciably more, mostly because of the reduction on the amount of state and local taxes.
3
It's interesting that the majority of comments here are claiming that their tax burdens increased even when all evidence suggests otherwise.
Even when presented with facts, liberals can't accept the tax cut.
4
@Lin
Isn't that the truth? And those complaining the most, because of the SALT cap, are among the wealthiest of Americans. Better watch out if the Dems get in and see about "redistributing" even more of your income. I only WISH I could afford to live in an area where I had the income to have SALT deductions over $10,000!
@Lin Did you even read the comments? The majority of them provide detail that demonstrates that they are paying more in taxes, not less. You might want to broaden your facts to include the ones that don't support your premise.
1
Sooner or later you will pay as well. As time goes on you will enter that bracket.
First thought: basing your observations on a survey monkey result which isn't a broad, proportional representation of society as a whole is disingenuous. While your overall perception may be right, the survey results are not going to present a picture that actually conveys the proper proportions in any real way.
Personally, I absolutely got hit for higher taxes in 2018. I am a free-lance musician who happens to still earn most of my income from W-2 sources, and like most of the other musicians in my community, we lost all of our business deductions in 2018. My income varies from year to year, so this isn't an exact comparison, but the difference in deductions was well into 5 figures for me, and the result was effectively a large income tax hike. I do notice that the authors talked about the difference in SALT, but they didn't address the loss of deductions in other ways. And, yes, I have compared my tax returns for the last two years, and they support my interpretation completely.
The real question that I have is how it was determined to place the burden on those of us that have these deductions, while avoiding any new tax burdens for those that make a hundred times what I make. And of course, this is all before consideration of the elevation of the national debt...
5
@ Jwinder... Did you report your income from being a musician on Schedule C? If so, all true business expenses are and should have been deducted against any of your music business related income. You might want to take a second look at your tax return.
Last year I got a refund, this year I had to pay about $2,000. So I don't believe I got a tax cut.
8
@ Dan... Compare your "total tax" line on your 2017 and 2018 tax returns and then report back. Refunds are driven by withholding (which the IRS screwed up last year) in equal measure as the total tax. I'm pretty sure your withholding was decreased in 2018 which resulted in larger take home pay during the year. Also, always better to owe the IRS than to give them your money interest free during the year. You just need to be responsible enough to have the money to pay them when due.
@Dan Stackhouse Thanks for confirming that most people struggle with math...
1
@Dan Stackhouse
Did you adjust your withholdings?
Yes I did receive a tax cut of about $300, $25 a month. I used the IRS website to determine my witholding, and was more conservative than what they suggested. I still owed $450, last year I received a refund. I wish I had not touched my witholding. I can understand how people missed their miniscule tax cut. My concern is the debt has blossomed thanks to the tax cut and now Republicans are insisting they must cut Medicare. I'm on Medicare so it feels like a shell game, give a little take a lot.
8
Refunds are determined by taxpayers, they determine how much withholding and estimated tax payments they make each year and therefore how much of a refund they receive.
My wife and I had a refund that was about the same as it was last year but our federal income tax was cut by about $1,000 which we received during the year through lower withholding from our pension payments.
We live in Washington State which does not have a state income tax.
3
This article is a molehill trying to hide a mountain. The problems with the 2918 tax bill were that the cut favored the rich and corporations and that it was last year's solution to this year's problem, a Republican zombie policy.
One of the authors of the article, in a reply to a reader, asserted that it was heavyweight Dem Pols who called the cut a hike. I think that some did but only after the stores of tax refunds turning into tax bills appeared in the press. In other words, it was the Trump administration's changes to withholding regs, made to pump up take-home pay, that lead to the tax bills that caused the perception of a tax hike and the Dems jumped on board to take advantage.
5
In other words, anti-Trump propaganda convinced people of a lie, that they didn't actually get a tax cut.
3
I have to admit it. This was the best tax year I've had in a decade. Thank you President Trump!!
6
I did not get a tax cut. My taxes went up because I lost much of my property tax deduction and I don't make enough to be in the higher tax bracket... #GOPTaxScam
5
Not if you are a New York city resident who pays over $10k in property taxes....grrrrr
2
We got more money through the year and then the IRS demanded $10K more--we both claim 0.
5
We definitely paid proportionally more taxes for 2018. Doesn't take a genius to compare last year's income and tax numbers.
3
The articles quotes an expert source saying that about two thirds of taxpayers got a tax-cut. So the other third did not.
You individual case may fall into the one third that did not, is so that is a shame for you. However, denying expert facts is like saying "this January was cold, therefore climate change is a hoax".
2
First, I filed on Friday. My taxes went up by just over 2K. Second, the moronic "tax cut" isn't a tax cut. It created debt so it is a deferment of expense and responsibility. I think that each trillion in national debt tosses an additional 3K onto the shoulders of each American.
Let me give you a real-world example. I call my bank and tell them that I can only pay $1200 of a $1800 mortgage. They say okay (give me this artistic license.) So now I have an extra $600 bones in my wallet and I can go and consume, consume, consume. But, uh oh, I still owe that $600. So now I get to pay it with a little extra vig over the next thirty years.
So guys like me are really 5K worse off than the year before. Of course, I have two kids, so they each have 3K in new debt on top of the 55K that every man, woman, and child already owes.
So no, most Americans did not receive a tax cut.
Most Americans got exactly what they thought they got--the shaft.
7
The authors engage in finger-wagging about American financial literacy, bemoan Democratic messaging and, when all else fails, break out semantic three-card monte about what a "tax cut" means. It is about as persuasive as the rest of the messaging on the tax bill. The letters to the editor on this one are going to be hilarious if the online comments are any guide.
3
I got a refund of over $1K in comparison to owing about the same the previous year -- but I was also forced to "accept" a complicated early retirement package, so it's not easy to calculate.
Still, I recall thinking: Cool. I really did get a tax break.
That would probably make me someone who thought they got a break but who didn't.
Regardless, even on a dwindling income, I would give back the thousand dollar refund if it would mean not having a troll in the white house (pretending to be) calling the shots.
And this disclaimer at the end of the article raised my eyebrows with regards to the thesis of the article:
"About the survey: The data in this article came from an online survey of 9,716 adults conducted by the polling firm SurveyMonkey from April 1 to April 7. The company selected respondents at random from the nearly three million people who take surveys on its platform each day. Responses were weighted to match the demographic profile of the population of the United States. . . ."
4
In my case we did NOT get a tax cut, much to the opposite.
3
Nope. Made 6000 more, paid 3000 more in taxes.
3
This strikes me as proof of just how dumbed down most Americans are, and how eager they are to be misled by those who don't have their best interests at heart.
The NYT itself contributed repeatedly and aggressively to this misperception, in particular by repeatedly running stories about people unexpectedly finding they owed tax or receiving disappointingly small refunds. Only much later, and "below the fold" did the Times choose to clarify the reasons. Oops, gee, did we do that?
I don't like Trump, either, but that's not good journalism.
1
This article raises more doubt than it answers.
Here's all you need to know from this article
"The top 20 percent of earners received more than 60 percent of the total tax cuts..."
6
So I guess the idea is that we're too stupid to subtract one number from another? With the drastic reduction in itemized deductions, my federal taxes went up by $1892. I did update my withholding amount, but didn't realize until fairly late in the year that it needed significantly more withheld. As you noted, this tax was designed to penalize people who live in higher taxed states, which are tilted to Democrats. So it was actually an attack on citizens who don't vote the way the party in power wanted. I will remember and mark my ballot accordingly.
12
I'm on a small pension (under $20,000) and I paid more. This is so unfair. I needed that refund for my roof. I detest the Republicans and their lies. This is going to hurt me. Bigly.
6
Please: just look at your chart, NYT. The wealthier you are, the more likely you are to have gotten a tax cut. And the tax cuts on middle class people will sunset, while the wealthy will continue to receive their cuts for years to come. This new law increases wealth inequality and therefore takes us farther down the regressive path we are on. This story is extremely misleading.
8
Doing nothing but the standard deductions, but a high withholding rate, I got back $7,000 last year, and $4,000 this year, so put me in the loser column because I got no deduct for my dependent 97 year old mother-in-law.
4
@Ryan
Whether you got a tax cut has literally nothing to do with the size of your refund unless you had the exact same withholding on the exact same income.
With my $121 I'm planning a trip to Europe.
5
Nope. Our taxes increased. We went through the numbers time and again, and we owed the Feds 5% more this year.
Tired of these condescending articles, especially when they don't point out that the IRS doesn't report what people pay in taxes so anything they're reporting is based on loose estimates. Loose estimates predicted we'd owe 0.5% less than last year, but when we actually filed the way things added up was that we owed more.
5
Token reductions if any at all for most.
The real winners were the to 10%.
This was know from the get go.
No surprises here.
What a sham. The usual GOP trickle down hokum.
3
I know I did as a small business owner. The change in S-corp taxable income was a relief especially NYC where I get killed with taxes. One of the few things I could give trump a thumbs up.
1
In a blue state my Federal income tax more than doubled.
5
Please don't imply that because I oppose the Trump administration and Republican party I am too addle-minded to understand reality. It's not that I "don't think I got a tax cut" when I did. It's that I didn't need a tax cut, and I say that as a state-employee librarian making less than $50,000 a year. More to the point: People worth over a $1,000,000 sure as heck didn't need a tax cut. Did they get one?
7
"The SALT cap did hurt families who earned enough to pay a lot of state and local tax but not enough to be affected by the A.M.T. (Other factors, like how people earned their money, also make a difference.) A Treasury Department audit estimated that 11 million taxpayers fell into that category." I'm one of the 11M taxpayers where my tax liability for 2017 was less than $100 but jumped to $6,100 for 2018 because I was unable to include $13,000 in additional state and local taxes. Moreover, in my opinion, the IRS should not have adjusted the payroll withholdings for 2018 as this made the situation worse.
5
Like almost every article I've seen about the impact of the new tax law, this one picks up on the few people who saw tax increases because of the limit on state and local tax deductibility. This is unfair, but as noted, affected only those who earned enough to itemize deductions and also paid more than $10,000 in state and local taxes.
What this, and most other, articles ignored is that the personal exemptions were eliminated. The standard deduction was doubled, which was good for most people, but for many the elimination of the personal exemption reduced or reversed the benefit. A single parent with one child is worse off, as is a couple with two children. The more children or other dependents you have, the more you faced a tax increase instead of cut.
7
I did get a tax cut (about $100). $100 is not worth blowing up the deficit. Just wait, when the lower individual tax rates expire, the Republicans will be saying--we must reduce services. So we will end up with a huge deficit and fewer services.
4
Another commenter here claimed this: "If you had SALT income over $10,000, which would indicate to me that you are rather wealthy...." - and that seems to be a common misconception.
News flash - if you live in one of the states with the highest property taxes, that doesn't mean you're rich. You might have a house that's appreciated in value, but that does you no good until you sell it. IL for example has the third highest property taxes in the country. I used to live in Chicago, and my taxes were over $10K a year, for a dumpy 2-flat with no upgrades, but in a desirable neighborhood (ie a good school district). And the $10K was less than it could have been, because I contested my bill every year, even going down to the Board of Appeals to make my case.
I was paying $10K a year while self-employed and making bupkus. I finally had to sell my places because I couldn't afford to live in Chicago anymore. So no, we're not all some rich elites.
8
Minor changes to the tax table are completely overshadowed by the loss of personal exemptions, and capping or eliminating access to common deductions used by middle and working class people (SALT, mortgage interest, home office expenses, other work-related costs like uniforms and trade publications and union dues, etc.). Our tiny "tax cut" was more than devoured by the loss of four household members' worth of personal exempti9ons and the SALT/mortgage bit. Our tax liability went up by thousands.
9
I don't believe I got a tax cut, I believe I got a small loan to sweeten becoming a co-signer on much bigger loans to rich people.
5
I did end up with a modest (barely measurable) tax cut. But I still support a repeal of this bill, for several reasons:
- the effects of SALT won't be seen immediately. The $10k property tax deduction cap will no doubt decrease home values, as will the capping of mortgage interest to the first $750k of a loan. We won't know the damage until a few years from now... but it's a safe bet that as people try to sell their homes, there will be damage.
- the bill (falsely advertised by the GOP as "tax reform") was nothing more than a redistribution of wealth from the middle-class (who could surely use some tax relief) to the top earners and corporations (who need tax relief much less, or not at all). How about Amazon and GE kick into the kitty for a change (both companies pay zero) and reduce the burden of the typical tax-paying citizen?
- the fact that Trump dangled the promise of a middle-class tax cut during the midterm elections is proof that the intention of this recent bill was not to benefit the middle (or, I would venture, even the upper-middle) class. It was a tax of the rich, by the rich for the rich.
Given the past 40 years of increasing wealth inequality this country has seen, this tax bill benefits a minute few excessively, and ultimately harms the majority of us.
9
My take on this is that what really changed were peoples refunds. I talked to many people people who were used to getting X amount per year and got much less for 2017. It seems less tax was taken out per paycheck , cutting refunds. Overall there was a net tax decrease, but the perception was that since their refunds were smaller, they were being hit harder. I know I had to go back and look at my own overall numbers, and this was the case.
2
@Vincemt Lewis That isn't true for some of us that are in businesses that require us to put a lot of our own money back into expenses, but still get paid by w-2 for the most part (we lost our ability to deduct that money). I am a free lance musician, so my income goes up and down from year to year, and my income in 2018 was around $19,000 lower than it was in 2017, but my federal tax bill was about $1,900 more for 2018. The prime difference was the inability to deduct my business expenses, coupled with a smaller effect by the new structure for SALT deductions.
2
@JWinder
Talk to an accountant - I doubt the tax bill reduced your ability to deduct business expenses.
I am one of the few, I guess, that did have my taxes go up but to my mind this tax cut represents everything I feel is antithetical to my perspective because of these questions I have. Who received most of the benefits of this legislation? Does it make sense to take on that much additional debt to get a tax break?
I saw a cut, too. Despite all the (Bernie, Elizabeth, CNN, MSNBC, pundits) screaming about the tax cut only being for 'millionaires and billionaires' it seems like a pretty good thing for my household.
3
@John As Nancy Pelosi said, "crumbs."
As a single homeowner without children in a high-local tax state, I sort of resent being called unusual. My taxes went up about $3k on nearly the exact same AGI and yes, I did the actual math on an Excel spreadsheet. I didn't listen to any of the messaging; I knew right away from the details that my taxes would go up and boy did they.
12
@Becca--You are so right (from a fellow New Yorker with the same pain).
1
It is not a tax cut, it is tax deferment since it was all funded by adding to the deficit. Or maybe you can call it tax transfer as I am transferring the tax to my children. Republican tax policy is financially unsound and immoral.
7
I did not get a tax cut even though the statistics in this study would suggest otherwise. Yes, my tax rate was lower this year than last. But the tax bill adds more than a trillion dollars to the debt without significantly boosting the economy. I will pay for this in a way that goes way beyond any immediate financial benefit. We may enter a deep recession without the monetary and other tools to jumpstart the economy. The government will try to cut my retirement and health benefits. We will have less money for infrastructure and other projects that benefit everyone and keep the US economy competitive. There may be inflation. My children will inherit this debt. Whatever the outcome, I will not be better off.
5
This article blames Democrats for pointing out the inequities in the new tax code. What about the Republicans and scam artists who devised a deeply partisan plan that punishes blue-state residents, that was described deceptively in rally after rally, and that was shoved through before full analysis on its national impact by the CBO?
15
“A lot of people who are very angry about the SALT were not thinking about it in the context of the stuff that actually benefited them,” Mr. Gleckman said.
Well, everything is relative. Citizens will notice a sitting-pretty elephant in an oval room telling lie after lie.
"It's going to cost me a fortune, this thing. Believe me," he said at a tax-reform speech in Missouri (29 Nov2017). "This is not good for me. Me, it's not so - I have some very wealthy friends. Not so happy with me, but that's okay."
"You know, I keep hearing [Sen. Charles] Schumer [saying] 'this is for the wealthy.' Well, if it is, my friends don't know about it," Trump said, referring to the Democratic leader from New York.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/homenews/administration/362413-trump-repeats-claim-that-he-will-not-benefit-from-tax-cuts?amp
This article barely mentioned "changed the treatment of some business income" which is only a windfall to.. Trump's "not so happy". Why question people's doubts, but fail to mention inheritance tax elimination benefiting the very wealthy?
We're force-fed "tremendous" and THAT'S false. After all, this nation holds $22T in debt, and the corporate rate was almost halved (without incentives to grow wages). People's children will pay the debt difference for the escaping corporations in some form. It'll likely be -- even less opportunity in a debt-ridden economy. You can bet that the youth will be "not so happy" with that Republican tax cut.
10
But how much of a tax cut did most people get? We know the richest friends of the GOP got millions, but if most if the rest got hundreds that would explain why few noticed. Then contrast that money with the cuts in services that will inevitably come with reduced government revenue. No wonder most people do not feel they are ahead.
3
Perhaps our incredulity has to do with that big shoe we know is waiting to drop. That 1.6 trillion dollar budget deficit brought to us by Republicans, which is supposed to be a giant "investment" in the wealthy, has not and will not produce results from which most us will benefit. When the bill for it arrives and/or Democrats are in power, the old anxiety will reappear, and the warnings of the deficit hawks will grow shrill. Their proposal will be to cut entitlements and essential governments services (leaving corporate welfare untouched, of course). The thing is that we have been playing this same game for decades now, and the cycles are short enough even for younger taxpayers to figure it out. It apparently never gets old for the winners, but they have to forgive the rest of us if we don't jump up and down and palpitate like contestants on a harebrained game show because they tossed us a cheap consolation prize that we know we will pay for afterwards.
4
No, just no! The only reason we didn't feel the tax cuts was that my husband increased his withholding last year. Otherwise we were out 4K at least. NO! Not in CA at least.
5
Our "tax cut" amounted to $6.68 more in our weekly take home, but we didn't see it as our weekly out of pocket premium payment for our employer based health insurance went up an even $10. Our tax refund was the same $700 it's always been. We are 60 and 69 living on less than 47k a year. And now we owe $11k out of pocket for hubby's heart attack in January. Retirement in the next three years? HA! Not a chance thanks to So much Winning.
8
I'm not particularly knowledgeable about taxes and tax policy, but here's what I do know: I live on a fixed income: pension and social security. Last year I paid about $300 for my federal taxes; this year it went up to $1230. My monthly payments only changed for social security with the very small increase in cost-of-living, about $5/month. It would have been more if I hadn't had so many medical expenses for my disabled daughter (for whom there was no more "exemption" allowed), that allowed me to itemize. No matter how you try to explain it, this is a tax increase for me.
9
Win win for us, as we made a little more last year, and paid a little less. And still feel no compunction to send any money to GOP political organizations (which was the main logic of the tax cut as per Speaker Ryan). Thanks for the free lunch Paul!
1
We used TurboTax, and it decided the standard deduction was what was best for us. That deduction is $12K smaller than the itemized total from last year. Last year, our withholding tax was short by $300. This year we were shot $800. Definitely feeling like a victim of the GOP's pique with blue states.
9
Face it, the wealthy did great this year.
Face it, millions of Americans had reduced refunds or owed taxes they didn't expect.
Face it, the fact annually they paid less, does not make up for the bill they now face or the lack of an expected refund.
Face it, the fact the administration blew it in educating the public to these changes.
6
I haven't done a careful analysis, but if I got a tax cut, it could be expressed in cups of coffee. When all the filling out of and shuffling of new forms was done, the difference in the outcome was trivial. Nothing was simplified, either.
5
One of the reasons people think that is because their actual bill went up. In our case, our final amount owed (state federal) is several hundred dollars more than the previous year. Our accountant said it's because we're not withholding enough, but we haven't changed our withholding since we got married.
2
"The data in this article came from an online survey of 9,716 adults conducted by the polling firm SurveyMonkey from April 1 to April 7. The company selected respondents at random from the nearly three million people who take surveys on its platform each day."
So, the authors are extrapolating from under ten thousand individuals who "take surveys on Survey Monkey's platform *each day* to tell millions of us how much better we're off tax-wise, the first year of tax filing under the "Big Beautiful Wonderful" tax plan? Is this correct?
Well, I am sitting looking at a 2009 and 2011 1040 Tax Table (extracted from my file cabinet) which shows; "If line 43- taxable income is"( line 10 on the 2018 1040) and comparing this with the 2018 1040 Tax Table: The taxable income (after all deductions) from $0-8,500 is still $840.00 for every category of filer. If you are single without dependents, there is no child tax credit. Only after $8,500 taxable income after the standard or itemized deductions is there a sliver of difference.
To lend any credibility to this article, the writers had an obligation to show real numbers along with touting 9000 "Survey Monkeys."
6
I can understand math and numbers quite well. The little tiny tax cut I received overall was not worth mentioning. I'd gladly give it back to see the corporate tax breaks and real estate tax law changes rescinded!!!
10
Of course there wasn't a tax rate increase. But, with the complexity of each person's situation, the situation really varies from person to person. In our case, there was no 'tax cut' in the sense that being unable to itemize, we ended up paying a bit more than we did last year.
Was there an actual tax cut? Sure. Did it end up reducing our taxes. Nope.
5
Let's cut to the chase here.
60 of America's biggest companies paid no federal income tax in 2018.
0, Zero, Nada, None
Yet my (measly middle class) taxes went up.
And even more galling, Donald Trump blatantly lied to the American when he said he would not be benefiting from his Tax Cuts for the Rich.
To Donald Trump: America demands that you release your tax returns
To Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell: America demands that you do your job and demand Donald Trump comply with Congress to release his tax returns.
15
I felt that Democrats messaging was clear - it is a tax cut, but disproportionately benefits corporations and the wealthy in a very significant way. Of course, reading these comments now, I'm not so sure that most Americans grasp the difference between their total tax liability and how that is unrelated to getting a refund or owing money, come tax time.
At any rate, as a high income household with a lot of pass-through and capital gains income, as well as children in a state with no state income tax and low property taxes, we saved about $20K on taxes, exactly as predicted by our CPA last year. But that doesn't mean I support the law in any way - it is crushing our country financially - we have no money to pay for basic things like infrastructure, social security, etc and will be leaving almost insurmountable debt to our children and grandchildren. So put me down as someone who is paying lower taxes, but sees how unfair it is that the benefits are so uneven, and how we are shirking our duties as a country.
9
I don't care how you spin it, 2017 taxes I received an 800.00 refund. 2018 W2 within 1500.00 dollars of previous year I got to pay 1480.00. I don't see a cut in there anywhere. Same exemptions.
9
The authors use a lot of words to describe something that is best described with numbers. What is each person's actual bottom-line "effective tax rate" this year compared to last year? I can't speak for anyone else, but mine went up. That is hard numerical FACT, not perception.
6
@Happy retiree Ours as well. AGI went up by a small percentage, tax went up three times as much (on a percentage basis).
1
Ugh. Face it, I did not get a tax cut. I got a huuuuuuge tax increase. I was one of the unusual 11 million ones who was impacted by SALT, and do not fall within the authors' generalized assumptions that I would ultimately get a tax cut (you mock us). My federal taxes increased $30k cos of living in NYC and new SALT. I would not mind if corporations and billionaires also got a proportional tax hike, yet clearly these tax hikes were targeted at parts of the country that overwhelmingly voted for the other candidate. So, Ben and Jim, when you write me a check for $30k, then I will "believe" I got a tax cut.
19
We saw a substantial increase in our taxes this year. We are retired and our income comes from Social Security for one of us and a teacher's pension for the other, along with investment income. Our income in 2018 was almost the same as in 2017 yet we paid more in taxes because some deductions that were allowed in 2017 were not allowed in 2018. So there is no guesswork here; we know we did not get a tax cut.
8
The proponents of the tax cut also spouted the POTUS claim that employers would give most working people a $4000 wage increase. Although a small number of companies gave employees a one-time $1000 - $1500 bonus, most simply kept the large corporate tax cuts and neglected to share the proceeds with the employees or invest them in equipment and training to help their businesses grow. Many were thrilled to simply buy back their own stock with zero impact on the economy
8
It's a tiny tax cut. Remember when Conservatives created the Tea Party movement demanding lower taxes right after the middle-class tax cut was passed?
2
Medicare for All and college tuition debt relief would go a lot farther than a $780 "average" annual tax savings to help that middle-fifth of working people get ahead. It is the median-income individual and family that should be the focus of tax and economic policy, and healthcare is big part of economic policy. What does a one-time $780 handout accomplish when that median-income worker and employer, if any, are paying $7000 a year for individual health coverage or $20,000 for family coverage, not counting deductibles and co-pays if they use it, and when those healthcare costs continue to rise? When a vocational, bachelor's, masters or doctoral degree remains the best path to higher lifetime earnings, helping more qualified students afford that education without crushing debt would be a greater boost than $780 tax savings. Nominal tax cuts are a cheap political trick that Republicans have successfully played on the working- and middle- classes for decades while the rich get richer and avoid taxes. I am hopeful it won't work again in 2020.
2
I definitely had a tax hike, not a tax cut. This is because of the elimination of the standard exemptions, which you used to get ON TOP OF itemized deductions. Loosing this cost me several thousand dollars in additional taxes. I am sure there are many, many others in the same situation.
10
My effective tax rate when up (not by a lot, but it went up). The cap on SALT deduction is the reason.
5
This is an editorial based on a faulty survey instead of on the actual facts and situation. Most people in Maryland who itemized their taxes got a large tax increase which is expressly aimed at punishing the services and jobs in Maryland -- top schools, traffic going into and out of another state or district, and the large amount of federal lands that are not taxed. It also really hits non-profit donations hard.
6
@Why Austerity Exactly! Thank you!
I will admit, that I saw a small increase in my weekly pay. Plus a little more when I did my taxes. In total, about $700 per year. My domestic partner did as well, but only a few hundred. We spent the $1,100 paying down our mortgage. We'll own our home in four less months. (We are both Democrats).
However, the refund came at a great cost to America. The biggest cuts were for the extremely rich. People who are hoarding money that doesn't flow through the system. It simply adds to their wealth.
Also, there were no offsets in spending, so the government is borrowing the money. Going deeper into debt to help the wealthy is simply bad policy.
6
The greatest existential threat facing America isn't global warming -- it's economic illiteracy. When most taxpayers still believe that their annual tax refund is a gift from the government, not a refund of already appropriated cash, then how are they going to intelligently deal with annual budget deficits, the $22 trillion (and ever growing) national debt, underfunded pensions and entitlements and other liabilities which are bankrupt or close to it? They don't even understand tax withholding. And who do they blame for their ignorance? A politician.
1
It's not so much i mind paying additional taxes - and we did, (though because of ACA overpayment and keeping withholding the same all year - we get a larger than average - to us - refund ) - it's how that tax money is spent. Instead of the middle class funding profits for the military industrial complex and building monumental walls I would prefer my tax dollars go to fund the fight against global warming and universal healthcare. And vaccines for *everyone.*
3
We should send the whole country back to do high school math.
Please focus on your total tax liability. Withholding versus refund is just a story about how you are arranging your own money.
Other stories about taxes reveal that many people do not understand the difference between overall tax rate and marginal tax rate.
It's become very difficult to discuss taxes!
6
comparing my 2018 tax return with my 2017, everything else the same...I received a 1,500 return in 2017 and a 1,300 return in 2018. But since my weekly check went up 40 dollars a week in 2018, I am 2,000 dollars up just from that, I know it's crumbs compared to what the wealthy received but it was hardly a big problem.
1
Just to add one more example to the many sent in thus far: My taxes rose considerably this year. Nor is it solace to learn that Amazon paid ZERO in taxes.
6
I owe 4k more this year and will pay total taxes of 3k more than last year, on income that increased 2k. Middle class life in a blue state. I keep thinking I did something wrong.
6
I think the more interesting question is how many people understand that the huge amount of deficit spending this tax cut has caused will likely lead to some serious inflation in the next decade...
The last time we had this type of deficit spending was in the 70's and when I graduated from college in the late 70's we had double digit inflation. I doubt anyone in there 50's or younger has any idea of the impact that serious inflation has.
3
@Engineer "The last time we had this type of deficit spending was in the 70's"
Well, it was during the Obama Administration, actually. Since the meltdown, we've been racking up debt at much higher rates than we ever did under Nixon or Reagan.
@Khadijah The meltdown under the Bush administration, right?
In order to get a true apples-to-apples comparison, I entered my 2018 income into my 2017 income tax software: My federal income taxes rose 8% as a result of the new tax law.
7
@Mark I did the same. Mine dropped 8% exactly.
So....thanks, I guess. :-)
3
Comparing 2017 to 2018, my gross income was down $7,000. My taxable income went up $15,000. I owed an additional $5000 in federal income tax. What really irked me though, was my employer reduced my payroll deduction in February without my consent. I owed $3,100 after payroll deduction which meant less discretionary spending the past two months - not good for our local economy.
1
I believe that for many, and probably most of us, the modest tax savings or nominal tax increases were inconsequential compared to the overall damage the new tax law will impose on the national debt and its consequential effect on the economy. We already know that tax receipts for 2018 are down from previous years and will not even closely match future spending on infrastructure, health care, climate change and education, which have been obscenely neglected and have been rising to a critical level that cannot be ignored. Yet the Trump administration is fiddling in the ignorance that everything is going well in recreating the glorious past of MAGA.
7
@Rudy Ludeke "Yet the Trump administration is fiddling in the ignorance that everything is going well in recreating the glorious past of MAGA."
Are you seriously suggesting that the Trump Administration is the first Admin to rack up debt? :-)
If I had earned $5k less, the loss of the exemption would have had me paying more tax under the Trump tax cuts than the previous tax regime. The loss of the exemption is probably a bigger deal than the SALT deduction. (By the way, an easy way to assess any author’s basic understanding of income tax is observe whether the loss of the exemption was mentioned. If they don’t mention it, they don’t really understand the issue.).
But, in any event, the tax cut worked out to something like $40/paycheck. It wasn’t a huge amount of money. In fact, the natural variation in my paychecks essentially masked it.
As an aside, the amount of money is quite small. Technically, a $1 tax cut is a tax cut.
I can tell you this, myself and most of my friends did not get a tax cuts, we saw ours rise. And this is not perception this is fact. I am a single parent and a small business owner and the deductions I lost and other changes increase what I owe this year. Likewise my other friends who are independent contractors and self-employed and are middle income or lower middle income saw their taxes rise as well.
But I am so happy that I and my kids were able to help fund the increased wealth of our country's billionaires and lower their corporate tax rates to what in many cases is now 0.
Even for those middle earners who got a tax cut, it is no where near what the wealthiest Americans received in this "tax cut" scam. Sadly the fact that the top 1% percent is not paying a more reasonable amount to invest back into the country that gave them the resources to get rich in the first place, ie. infrastructure and educated labor, means we all suffer in the long run. We are not going to be in a position to continue to lead economically or otherwise, and as these tax breaks for the wealthy will need to be funded by further cuts to programs like social security and ignoring needs like education and infrastructure, taking us further down a rabbit hole to a country of haves and have nots, where the American dream no longer becomes possible for much of the country. In reality we are already there.
9
As a tax pro, I'm trying to explain to people they paid less, even if they got a smaller refund.
As a citizen, even as one who lost a little with the SALT cap, I would rather be paying at the old rates and actually see a return on my investment in the country in the way of education and infrastructure.
The whole 'file on a postcard' is a joke as all it did was add schedules that need to be added and made things more complicated. I've had many clients who for years did their taxes online for free, but this year had to pay to have them done to take advantage of the credits they were due. The idea was to make things simpler, but in reality it's made it more difficult for most.
It's like healthcare, the system in place is not the best, but to try to start from scratch would be near impossible as too many influencers want to keep their own small benefits and entire industries would be obsolete. (And of course too many large corporations pay too little)
9
If you want to make a tax cut look bigger than it really is in an election year you lower withholding. That way the bill doesn't come due until after the election.
8
I am a 67 year old widow in Ohio. My income is under $75,000 that comes from primarily social security, pension with some interest and dividends. I did the math. The percentage of tax I paid in 2017 increased in 2018. I did not take the standard deduction because I donate to charity. I was not able to take all my state and local taxes because of the cap. I have lived in the same house for almost 30 years and the property taxes continue to go up without regard to my marital status. I don't get to take the standard deduction for married people. My only deductions are charity and the SALT. I lost the personal exemption. I didn't adjust my withholding as I let the pension administration use the table. I think the IRS failed to increase the tables as appropriate to fool the citizenry into thinking they were getting a bigger tax cut than they actually did. I normally don't complain about taxes. I resent that my taxes went up when people who have much higher incomes get a cut. I resent that married couple get double the standard deduction when their property taxes make no adjustment for marital status or income. Some of them make no charitable contributions. I think a lot of citizens of moderate means - in particular single retired citizens - were hurt by the 2017 tax law. I am not sure it was intentional. The tax laws and the economists for some reason always use married couples with children as the norm when actually I believe most households in this country are single.
32
@Jrw, my situation is similar to yours, and I too resent the emphasis on married couples. I am really getting creamed this year, with the loss of the personal exemptions -- I have one dependent who is not a child -- and the SALT limitation. Oh, and the loss of HELOC deductions. It's as if they looked at me and said, "what can we do to cause the most pain to this specific taxpayer?"
10
@Jrw, You didn't say you were taxed at 12% instead of 15%.
@Ryan Actually, on the basis of the information they provided, they would have been taxed at 22%, not 12%.
2
I am a 67 year old widow in Ohio. My income is under $75,000 that comes from primarily social security, pension with some interest and dividends. I did the math. The percentage of tax I paid in 2017 increased in 2018. I did not take the standard deduction because I donate to charity. I was not able to take all my state and local taxes because of the cap. I have lived in the same house for almost 30 years and the property taxes continue to go up without regard to my marital status. I don't get to take the standard deduction for married people. My only deductions are charity and the SALT. I lost the personal exemption. I didn't adjust my withholding as I let the pension administration use the table. I think the IRS failed to increase the tables as appropriate to fool the citizenry into thinking they were getting a bigger tax cut than they actually did. I normally don't complain about taxes. I resent that my taxes went up when people who have much higher incomes get a cut. I resent that married couple get double the standard deduction when their property taxes make no adjustment for marital status or income. Some of them make no charitable contributions. I think a lot of citizens of moderate means - in particular single retired citizens - were hurt by the 2017 tax law. I am not sure it was intentional. The tax laws and the economists for some reason always use married couples with children as the norm when actually I believe most households in this country are single.
3
In order to get a true apples-to-apples comparison, I entered my 2018 income into my 2017 income tax software: My federal income taxes rose 8% as a result of the new tax law.
10
My taxes tripled. I had to find $13,000 out of nowhere. So, yeah, I most definitely did NOT get a tax cut. I know no one who did.
12
My taxes went up by $1200 over what it would have been, according to my accountant; due to the SALT limit. Thanks GOP, appreciate that.
8
What tax cut? I'm a New Yorker - I did my taxes, I lost most of my deductions, and my taxes went up.
14
@RJ
If you want to drastically lower your tax burden, leave New York now. The state has the highest overall tax burden in the nation. Leave, or stop complaining.
@Ed New York state also contributes much more on the federal level, due to it's income levels, Perhaps we should begin to dole out money to states in proportion to how much they contribute to the federal budget, so we can eliminate the drag on our budget of the states that take more than they give.......Then we could simply tell citizens of those states to leave, or stop complaining......
2
If the public is incredulous, it may have a lot to do with that other giant shoe waiting to drop. The 1.6 trillion dollar deficit is an incomprehensibly huge bill coming our way. It has not and will not produce much benefit for anyone but the over-privileged few. When it does, Republicans will refresh the national angst over the gaping revenue shortfall. Their solution will be to cut entitlements and essential government services (corporate welfare excepted, of course). This a game we have been playing for decades now, in cycles short enough to be remembered by younger tax payers. It never gets old for the winners, but they'll have to forgive us if we don't bounce up and down and palpitate like contestants on a harebrained game show because we got a cheap prize we know is going to cost us down the road.
12
The biggest boost in income I have ever received from changes in law was the result of the Affordable Care Act. I was able to get an adult child off of COBRA and into a much better exchange policy, so both the premiums and out-of-pocket expenses were much lower ( about $8000). For the next three years I was able to keep another child on our health insurance instead of COBRA.
This year it appeared that I got another break, though much smaller. But it was a mirage of over-withholding.
5
Uh, nope. Not only did we not get a tax cut, our tax owed tripled. We now have to enter a payment plan, ostensibly, to pay the 1 percent so they can buy new vacation homes and first class vacations to Bali.
22
Nope. For the first time in 25+ years, we used the federal standard deduction instead of itemizing. We normally get a healthy refund after paying estimated taxes. Had the SALT deduction not been cut, we would have itemized. As it was, the standard deduction was a wash with itemizing, but we lost the deductibility of over $10,000 in state and property taxes paid.
If not for installing solar panels on our house, we would have owed the feds some $2000 despite hefty estimated payments.
We allocated our entire refunds toward 2019 estimated, and will likely owe real money next year.
7
Something I see in our taxes is that people who are unusually generous, and thus unusually likely to itemize, and live in high-tax states, really got hit. The higher standard exemption is a huge disincentive to people who give money away. That said, I hope that it does not decrease charitable giving - a very important part of our society that our current president does not value in the least.
15
All I know is I got five new tax benefits in 2018 - no AMT, significant and material ways to increase real estate depreciation (if it wasn't legal it would be criminal), a real estate income credit, a lower marginal tax rate on earned income and a lower marginal tax rate on capital gains. This reduced my tax bill to the lowest in the history of my life. As much as I liked that it was completely 100% regressive to wage earning Americans. But hey I didn't vote for the man stealing your money and I'll be happy to pay higher taxes again when you realize you have just been robbed blind!
11
@Sonja
Read HR Blocks press release last week...the real unadjusted non politicized numbers show most middle class taxpayers received a healthy cut in 2018.
We did not get a tax cut. We usually do not get a refund, which is fine. However, we owed more this year. Our effective tax rate increased by 3.7% as compared to 2017 and our income was the same. This increase in effective tax was largely due to the changes in deductions and the cap on state and local taxes. I am not wealthy by any means by Southern California standards (we are solidly middle class).
17
@Heather--youre in the minority and the problem for you is because state and local taxes in CA are so high.
I’m quite aware that I did not get a tax cut. Because of the limit on tax deductibility, my taxes almost doubled.
12
No matter what, 100% of the people who are paid under $50,000, perhaps more in more expensive areas, should have gotten a tax cut. The numbers on this bar chart are reversed.
Seriously - that's lame.
1
I definitely received a cut. I checked as soon as I did taxes. It would have been much more significant with SALT deductions intact though.
The problem I have is that this is just a shallow attempt at bribery to justify the law’s true purpose. “Here have a little extra so the millionaires and billionaires whose whims decide if you even have a job can get a huge windfall tax cut that they don’t even remotely need.” No thanks. The government should be using that money to invest and improve our infrastructure and social safety nets.
Our roads are crumbling, our healthcare system is sadistic, our trains are a joke, our cities are beset by natural disasters, our border is overwhelmed by the number of refugees we receive, and our homeless populations are growing. But what were the Republican priorities? Cutting taxes for their donors, first with the side effect of returning our healthcare system to its even more sadistic pre-ACA state and when that failed they decided to just cut taxes the good old fashioned way, giving away massive undeserved cuts to the rich and tiny token cuts to the rest of us to try to make us feel better.
Later they will use the huge hole they blew in the budget to justify voting against any government program that spends money and might actually help regular people in a meaningful way.
The Republicans in the House, the Senate, and the Oval Office don’t use their power to make our lives better. They don’t do their jobs and they don’t deserve to have them.
42
The problem is not this alleged tax cut. My gripe with this whole sleight of hand is the coming cuts to Medicare and SS to finance this debt-fueled party. I know I am not alone in suggesting to maintain the status quo if it meant being able to participate in programs I have paid into for my entire working life.
And to those who think the corporate tax cut was gonna make us more competitive-guess again. Ireland has 12% so you can guess what repubs will push for in order to restore "parity" with other industrialized nations. Of course if Ireland and other nations wasted billions on "defense" the outcome would be MUCH different. This is all a race to the bottom.
In fact you cut the American corporate tax rate to zero and guess what? Jobs would NOT come back because many greedy employers don't want to pay decent American wages.
This is NOT going to end well...
24
I don't know about the "average American". Neither does the Tax Policy Center, although they seem to claim otherwise. (How do they know this? Tax returns are supposed to be private.)
But I do know about myself.
In the year 2017, 10.21% of my family income went to federal income tax. In the year 2018, that rose to 15.61%.
113
In 2017 I paid 9% of my taxable income to the IRS.
In 2018 I paid 10% of my taxable income to the IRS.
That is an increase of 10% in the dollar amount paid to the IRS, some tax cut?
13
@Dan Styer
It’s because the federal tax brackets and tax laws are public and other data is also available to make accurate generalizations.
For example, the new tax laws cap mortgage interest deduction at $750,000 for the year. So anyone complaining about this obviously is someone who is not middle class.
@Tee Your second paragraph has no relationship to anything that was said by Dan Styer or S Senator. If you look up and down the comment thread, it is pretty clear that there are almost no comments relating to problems with the mortgage interest reduction cap.
2
“Face it. You probably got a tax cut.”
Maybe, but your kids will have to pay for it.
No program cuts accompanied the tax cuts. They boosted the National Debt. By about two trillion dollars.
Future citizens will see more of their taxes going to pay interest on the debt instead of fixing and building roads and operating our national parks.
97
@Richard
Why just the kids? If Republicans have their way, the burden on workers to fund their own healthcare will only increase, programs to help make higher education and home ownership more achievable will decrease, and programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will shrink.
13
In convincing people that they would not benefit, “the Democrats did a very good job,” said Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center. “They were able to put that into the public perception, and the reality has been unable to break that perception.”
This says it all - propaganda. While the Dems accuse Trump, the Republicans, and most any that don't agree with the far left agenda as propagandists (at best), it is the Dems that continue to promote propaganda. Both parties are shameless.
Most received tax cuts, as the article concludes. But to get a tax cut and believe it was an increase tells me how dumbed down people really are; it also tells us something of the complexities of the tax code that neither party is willing to tackle.
The main problem was that many people changed their withholding. I suspect the IRS directed this in an attempt to promote the Dem propaganda. Actually, I'm certain of it.
4
You shouldn't be certain of things you have no evidence for. You are wrong in this case. Withholding tables were changed as part of the tax legislation passed by Republicans.
4
@Ma I got married this year. Last year my husband and I both had refunds. This year filing jointly we owed over $1,000. It does not feel like like tax cut to us.
4
@Ma I'm a California democrat, and I received a tax cut because of the increase in the standard deduction. My tax cut is likely around $500. Before I left LA, the monthly rent on my modest, one bedroom apartment was four times that. In a city, where real estate prices rule your finances, a few hundred dollars a year is just not going to change your quality of life, and feels like "no change." In my opinion, the psychology of liberals' cognitive dissonance on the tax cut is better explained by liberals overwhelmingly being concentrated in high cost cities, where you need a promotion, not a tax cut, to afford a higher quality of life.
2
Typically the purpose of a tax cut, or increased federal spending, is to give a boost to a lagging economy. A tax cut during the recession in 2009 would have been welcome, but in 2018 it's just downright wasteful, much like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Plain and simple, it's a sign of poor management - like a casino, any casino, going bankrupt!
6
I got the tax boost. The salt issue. Now I have to take 0 deductions & take out anothet $100 each paycheck to come out even on tax day. Something isn't right here.
7
@Darrell
Yup same here. I changed my withholding to Married filing separately, paid $13k in property taxes and just ignored the mortgage interest. I guess I am in the 11 million that didn't hit AMT but had SALT issues. Hooray!
1
Trump's tax cut saved him millions in one year. I got about a thousand. Oh so let's all be happy nearly everybody got a tax cut!
5
Things are great.
The unemployment rate is great. Black employment is great. Our partisan divide? Never greater. Greatest of all?
Our national debt. The ticking time bomb that no one really wants to discuss (shame on you, all of you!!).
Our taxes for 2018 are 1.05% less than 2017. That's right, less. But when we compare the reduction in taxes to our share of the national debt, it's no contest. The ratio was just under 95:1
Winning? I don't think so.
4
I also found myself owing more than ever before. Many of my deductions went away, even though I still am head of household and a widow. Why did all those corporations get a bailout but I have to pay more? This is an oligarchy and I see nothing but further attempts by T-p to consolidate power and shut everyone else out. Could it be they found out I was a Democrat. Oh no they just figured since I live in New Jersey they would punish me.
2
@LRG--i live in NJ. My effective tax rate went down.
Our effective tax rate was completely unchanged, 17% despite adding another dependent.
It is hard to tell about the tax cuts - right? They simultaneously reduced the withholding so that each paycheck was artificially higher and appeared to be a result of the tax cut. Many have found that they owe because of reduced withholdings. My accountant advised us to reduce the deductions.
It's not simply an "impression," it's a fact: I paid A LOT more this year, due to the virtual elimination of the deduction for state and local taxes. This is a deduction that has been in place for close to a hundred years. This new rule was devised by Mitch McConnell and friends, to stick it to the blue states. Remember, the blue states subsidize the red states, who pay far less in federal taxes than the benefits they receive.
8
The cap on SALT definitely negatively impacted us and we had to pay substantially more in federal taxes this year. Definitely no tax cut in our household.
5
Face it, the tax cuts punished the blue states with better schools (higher property taxes) and better social supports. Meanwhile, I'm paying more so the 1 percent can have their tax cut. And, it's more in net taxes paid, not just a misunderstanding because of withholding, etc.
8
Yes, this year we did. But what about going forward? Our tax cuts diminish to nothing over the years while the very rich enjoy increases each year. Why are you trying to sell this to the American people?
1
I am a self-employed, work as an independent contractor, and am on the lower end of middle class. I always pay 20% of my income in taxes, state and federal combined. This year, I paid 23%. I've never paid that much before! There's no question the tax cut for the wealthy comes on the backs of the middle class.
7
The section of my tax return that listed the amount that I paid in state tax plus the amount that I paid in local property tax far exceeded the $10,000 that I was allowed to deduct.
Also, the amount that was deducted from my check was far too little. If I had not opted to substantially increase my withholding, it would have been a significant burden to pay the amount that I owed.
6
So they take less out which gives me a bigger paycheck but then I owe at the end of the year. That’s not a tax cut, that’s slight of hand.
5
I received an extra $207 a month in my check in 2018. That is $2,484. A very good tax cut for someone making a decent middle class salary. But I just had to send a check to the IRS for $4,300. Last year I received a $2,000 federal refund. That is a net negative of $6,300. Minus the monthly increase in my check and I still netted $3,800 less in 2018 after the Trump "tax cut."
Nothing else changed not my salary, investment income, dependents,...nothing. And everyone I talk to, almost all hardworking, middle income, middle aged Americans (many Republicans--I am an Independent), also owed on their federal returns this year for the first time. And the net, like mine, was a tax increase.
So please cut it out.
18
I did. I’ll admit it: I got a tax cut! Then, due to confusion in the new tax law, the state of Oregon erred and gave me too much money back which I spent and used to pay off debt, only to find out two months down the road that they made a mistake in calculating my taxes. Now I owe the state $700. I guess I’ll take the chump change the tax law is saving me, save it all year long, and pay off my debt with the state. Hooray!
1
One thing to remember is that it's only going to get worse for average folks bc this so-called tax will be eliminated very soon. Also, if only our tax dollars were paying for better schools, higher pay for teachers, infrastructure, climate change protections, and health care then I’d be happy but we are paying for trump security at Mara Lago and ballooning our deficit. What's the upside bc I don't see it?
13
Yeah, lots of people in the middle and lower income levels got a small tax cut, but they are also now on the hook for a larger portion of the debt. While those at the top got a large give away, and are now on the hook for a smaller portion of the debt that is now increasing more rapidly as a result of these cuts.
4
The significance of the SALT cap is NOT how much it affected tax payments. The significance is how high-tax blue states, who already pay more in federal taxes then they receive in federal spending, were targeted by the GOP with the SALT cap, making the gap between "giver" and "taker" states even larger.
Citizens of blue states need their congressional delegations to fight for federal spending in their states. We are being shafted when it comes to federal spending.
32
All I know is, I had to pay a federal tax for the first time in years. It wasn't much, but as a teacher, I don't make much, so I look forward to that refund. It was very disheartening.
7
@NGP
Of course when you get a refund, the federal government has had use of your money without paying you any interest. Perhaps better to modify your withholding & set aside an appropriate amount each month & earn a little interest on it.
2
@NGP, all due respect, but your comment just exposes the innumeracy of the average (and I do understand the mathematical meaning of that word, but here I just use it as shorthand) American.
You pay federal and state income taxes with each paycheck. They are deducted from your gross pay. Look at your paystub.
The difference this year is that the amount withheld each paycheck was decreased, with the intent to show that you (and every other taxpayer) got a “decrease in taxes.”
The problem here is two-fold. One, most people didn’t think to re-file a W4 to adjust their withholding upwards to ensure they didn’t owe on 15 April because of insufficient withholding. Two, and this is the more egregious problem, calculating a new withholding is difficult in a blue state where SALT is significant and the rules weren’t clear until very late in the tax year.
So likely your specific problem was that previously-deductible state income taxes were not deductible for this year, resulting in a tax increase. And the effect was that rather that you getting a check from the Federal government, you had to write one.
Which feels like you “had to pay a federal tax for the first time in years.”
But you have paid federal income tax every year of your working life.
1
This article is missing a key element of the new law in its assessment related to the changes in deductions and this affected people when filing, and THIS is where a lot of people now think they didn't get a tax cut. Yes, I got a "tax cut" and saw extra money in my paycheck but that extra $$ that was in my paycheck is a wash after I readjusted my withholdings to ensure I don't owe on April 15 (I try to break even on my taxes, I don't want to owe, but I don't want a large refund either). So now I see no difference in my take-home pay. Additionally when I did file, I received less back this year than last year due to changes in deductions, so had I not readjusted, I'm sure I would have owed when I filed. I'm not alone - this is what many people experienced. So even if you were one of the ones who received a tax cut, if you have to offset it to prevent owing when you file, or you got less back, it's going to feel like you never got a tax break regardless if you did or not.
1
I disagree that the Democrats' messaging on the tax bill has been misleading. I think the Democrats' messaging has focused on the fact that most of the benefits of the tax bill went to the wealthy and to corporations, not that most people would not be receiving a tax cut. The relatively small amount of the tax cuts being received by many Americans is probably a better explanation of why they don't believe that they received a tax cut this year.
127
@JDP I agree that a lot of the Democratic criticism of the law focused on the disproportionate benefits for corporations and the wealthy (which is absolutely accurate), and on the relatively small cuts for middle-income families (ditto).
But I also saw a lot of claims from prominent Democrats that the law was a "middle-class tax hike." Depending on the exact wording, those claims were often either misleading or outright false.
42
Republicans have long been the masters of misleading messaging. And you know that.
Because of the $10K limitation on deduction of state and local taxes, we lost some big deductions and got pushed into a higher bracket. For many of us in the middle class, it was a tax hike! Your article (especially its title) does not help move the conversation forward.
43
@JDP As of 2017, the U.S. had the fourth highest corporate income tax rate in the world. Now it ranks in the middle of the pack.
If you want to criticize the lowering of the corporate tax rate to one more competitively in-line with global corporate tax rates, then your beef is actually with all those other beggar-they-neighbor lower-tax-rate countries.
10
It is time to get rid of ALL deductions from our individual income tax. There should be no way to reduce the amount of taxes owed. It would make tax filing very simple, just add up your income, apply the rate, and you are done. All income should be treated the same for tax purposes; no different rates for different income.
This would eliminate all the tax avoidance schemes that plague our system. The government could easily calculate your taxes and send you a bill. All the IRS would have to do is verify your income.
2
@catlover Given that my annual healthcare premiums are in excess of 50% of my after tax income, I'll take all the relief I can get via deductions...
1
But...some states tax income at a higher rate (for schools, roads, infrastructure, environmental protection, teachers’ pay...), and some states let those go unfunded. Without deductions for local taxes, some folks would pay twice. Is that fair?
I don’t think so, especially when people from high-tax states pay the most to support the federal government.
Yeah. I remember how ineffectual Bush's tax cut was, too. I was talking to a supervisor at one of our customer's and I mentioned the Bush tax cut from the previous year. He replied,
"Oh, yeah. I remember that. What did I do with that? Oh, yeah. I had a barbecue."
Tax cuts don't provide the stimulus to the economy as advertised. They do matter to the wealthy, but they do not necessarily invest it in productive ways. I did hear yacht sales are way up.
28
@ron The interesting thing is that "have a barbecue" is exactly what President Bush was hoping people would do -- reinject their tax cut into the economy via spending. A lot of people didn't, though; they saved the money instead (probably a good decision for them, but one that limited the impact of the tax cuts on the economy).
The Trump tax cuts, by contrast, were meted out gradually in people's paychecks (via reduced withholding), rather than in a lump sum. That probably means more people spent them rather than saved them, since they were harder to notice. That probably increased their short-term stimulative effect, but also probably muted their political impact. Meanwhile, many economists think this was the wrong moment to try to stimulate the economy, since unemployment was already low.
10
@Benjamin Casselman I'm retired and on a small pension. Under $20,000 and I paid more this year than in previous years. The rich are happy. I am not.
9
@Benjamin Casselman The slightly larger amount in the paychecks resulted in changes in withholdings made by the IRS to make it look like there was more money. But now, at tax time, the scam becomes clear - it was just smoke and mirrors. The vast majority of wage earners didn't know that, hence, huge tax bills today after not adjusting their withholding. If you believed TT, you were suckered, his specialty.
It's unclear where the "got a tax cut" data comes from. Is it from the broad analysis in the "tax cuts by the numbers" section?
If so, how do we know the survey respondents did get a tax cut?
Cherry picking survey respondents for one attribute (I think I got a tax cut), and pairing them up with another attribute from an independent data set (actually got a tax cut) seems dodgy to me.
At the very least it needs to be explained/justified much better than this article has done.
11
@togldeblox The "got a tax cut" data is based on modeling from the Tax Policy Center. Modeling from other groups finds very similar results, as does hard data from H&R Block.
We don't have enough information to know exactly who in our survey data did or didn't get a tax cut. But surveys have been very consistent in finding that a majority of Americans don't believe they got a tax cut, when the evidence consistently shows the opposite is true.
15
@Benjamin Casselman
I used actual tax tables from 2009, 2011, 2015, 2016, 2017 from my file cabinet and those tax cuts are still meager for anyone with taxable income under $50,000 annually (which millions across the nation fit).
Trump's 2016 Campaign promise:
" No longer charge income tax to single individuals earning less than $25,000 per year or couples earning less than $50,000. These people will, however, be required to file a one-page form with the Internal Revenue Service that states: "I win."
1
Yeah my federal taxes were up by $3,326; my state taxes were up by $22.
That's a family vacation to some sunny, low-tax state I won't be taking and money I won't be spending there!
7
Dang, looks like you all know more about my taxes than me -- what about all the folks who ACTUALLY didn't get a tax cut?
5
The Tax Bill of 2017 is a classic Trump deception.
As many of the readers pointed out, what counts is not what your refund is, but what your total tax is. However, while the average person is consumed with the discussion of what our individual refund might be, the 2017 tax "reform" law was a tremendous gift to the wealthy especially the "investor" class and the self employed, especially if you are in a real estate business. Corporate tax rates were reduced from 35% to 21% and this savings compounds every year ad infinitum. Self employed individuals have 20% of their income exempt from taxes up to a family income of $315,000 and if you are in a real estate business, that exclusion extends to infinity. Real estate investment trust distributions are also given the new favorable tax rate with a a 20% exclusion from tax of those distributions (Section 199A).
Guess whose family's real estate business will benefit the most from this bill... While we argue over the scraps from Donald Trumps's family table they have parlayed his Presidency to solidifying and augmenting their family's wealth for generations.
23
I do my own taxes and it's very complicated for the first time this year. No SALT deduction above $10k. Why did the GOP think that getting rid of SALT would be good for the real estate market? #GOPTaxScam
6
I got a big tax cut, probably because I make a lot of money from capital gains. That is wrong.
Also, as our roads crumble and schools have undrinkable water, I don’t think lower taxes are the right goal. I’m lucky enough to have a very comfortable income. I should have to contribute more so that all have the opportunities I was given at birth, including a safe community in a desirable school district.
41
We no longer got hit with AMT tax which was nice and don't have mortgage interest to write off because we live in a smaller house than we can afford and paid it off. I think we paid around $1,000 less but I would have to pull out our returns from the past 3 or 4 years to do the calculations. About the $10,000 cap on property taxes, right now it doesn't affect us but shouldn't there have been a cost of living increase on this deduction of a few hundred each year? These taxes tend to go up. Lastly I think most of the taxes we paid to the Federal gov't get eaten up in about 1/1,000,000th of a second by debt service on the country's debt which makes me mad.
3
@Sam C., of course there "should" be a cost-of-living increase on the deduction limitation, but since this was put in as a way to punish blue states, of course there is not.
When you get a HUGE amount of money back in 2018 with each paycheck and check TWICE your withholdings to make sure you are paying IN as you should, then end up PAYING when you file your taxes, it does NOT feel like a "cut" at all. And that is the problem. It was NOT a cut but just a reduction in withholding.
6
The perception of an increase, even among those who got a cut, is there because we know that the GOP plan is a bait and switch plan for most but the ultra-wealthy business owners, and a punishment to those in many blue states with high state taxes. Our taxes will go up, while successful businesses who were already hiding massive profits will continue to benefit. The increased deficit resulting from the GOP plan will further hurt the 99% through reduced public services.
9
The increase in the standard deduction was offset by the loss of the Personal exemption. I suspect that when people in the polling "think they got a tax cut", they don't really know. The Tax Cut benefited the Wealthy Class so much more than any other class that this article by so called experts is an affront to all common sense citizens.
12
@anthony ciccarelli THIS IS THE KEY TAKEAWAY; High earners did far better under the law. The top 20 percent of earners received more than 60 percent of the total tax savings, according to the Tax Policy Center; the top 1 percent received nearly 17 percent of the total benefit, and got an average tax cut of more than $30,000. And that’s not even factoring in the law’s huge cut to corporate taxes, which disproportionately benefit the wealthy households that own the most stock.
10
I thought everyone would want to know if they were paying more or less. And you just take the total tax for 2018 and compare it to 2017. That most Democrats and many Republicans haven’t a clue how they did is distressing. If you don’t know how you did, you’re missing important information at your fingertips that
would help you evaluate the tax bill.
1
Solidly middle class - and my parents, my coworkers, my parents all paid more in taxes this year. What refund?
And yeah and we are left with trillions of debt because the majority of the tax cut went to people who were already perversely rich.
So yeah some of us got extra $10 a month for 12 months. Some of his friends got extra $1 billion a year, that’s what $800 million a month?
So yeah obviously the middle class “WON”
19
@M
"Some of his friends got extra $1 billion a year, that’s what $800 million a month?"
May need to check that math a little.
1
All the folks experiencing a Federal tax increase as a result of the SALT limitation, should lobby their respective states and local tax authorities, to reduce their state and local tax burden. No one gets more than (or even close to) $10,000 in actual benefits from their state/locality every year, so it is nuts when certain states + localities (I'm looking at you Westchester) tax more than can be deducted.
4
@Richard. You may tell people to complain to local authorities, but they took it out on the Republicans. Places like CA and NJ saw huge losses of Republicans in Congress.
@Richard, in my town, it costs $18,000 to educate each child. I'd say that a lot of people here are getting direct individual value far greater than the 10K cap every year. And then there are the shared benefits -- local police, firefighters, street paving, snow plowing, park maintenance, and from the state, many more kinds of services.
1
My refund was only slightly lower than last year, but my take home pay increased by about $90 a week. My income is in the top 20%.
1
I paid fewer taxes, but, in the long run, the costs of this fallacy will be much higher. So, did I really pay fewer taxes?
6
While it is possible that low and moderate people did actually get some kind of tax cut, all articles like this do is continue to push the tax bugaboo.... and it also lets the readers forget about the fact that stuff -- our courts, our judges, our defense dept, our EPA etc etc etc -- cost money. We can certainly discuss how the money should or should not be spent -- but to continue the anti-tax mantra of the Club for Growth and every other right wing organization is disgusting. Taxes need to go up -- IMO on the rich and the inheritors and on corporate America...We need to expand our threadbare "safety" net and how about infrastructure? The US is now a third world in terms of the overall health of its citizens and in terms of our very outdated roads, bridges, airports etc etc.
18
The fact that I got a tiny tax cut is a joke when billionaires and corporations (incl. my employer) rec'd ginormous cuts that they did not need and will not put back into the economy. Equally important, the deficit is exploding because....duh.....revenue to the US Treasury is declining. Face it, republicans are fiscal hypocrites and have been for decades.
41
Maybe it’s as simple as: most of us don’t know how much we pay in taxes so it’s hard to determine if we paid more or less than the year before.
For employees, taxes are most often withheld before they ever see any of their money. Unless they actually explicitly sit down to look through their records withholding and tax returns,they don’t know how much they paid in taxes. I would bet that the majority of people can not state how much they paid in taxes in a given year.
I personally pay “estimated taxes” quarterly. That’s the IRS’ term. The reason it’s called “estimated taxes” is that the IRS and I literally don’t know how much I will owe by the end of the year. No one knows.
7
Plainly stated, most households got a small tax cut, while many got nothing, and a few got the really big breaks.
11
I did our taxes on Saturday, and we must be unusual. Our taxes most definitely went up. The elimination of the personal exemption and the SALT cap absolutely hit us. Our income puts in the top 20%, so no major complaining. However, as we work for our money and live in a somewhat high tax state (and quite blue at the federal level), I recognize that we were the intended targets.
86
“To a large degree, the gap between perception and reality on the tax cuts appears to flow from a sustained — and misleading — effort by liberal opponents of the law to brand it as a broad middle-class tax increase.”
A fairer way to state the key liberal critique of the 2017 tax law is that the middle class benefits were temporary and they’ll end up paying for the permanent reductions in business and top-end rates. A gain in 2018 does not invalidate that criticism, since the effects of the cut have yet to fully play out.
Check back in 2030.
9
This story goes to great lengths to avoid plainly stating that most households got a small tax cut, while many got nothing, and a few got the really big breaks.
18
The "tax cut" for my family was a 10% increase in taxes we paid last year. I "...don't buy it" because I can't buy anything. I have to pay thousands to the IRS.
13
Many of my clients owe more on account of the underwithholding. Many are on extension awaiting further tweaks of the Modernized eFile System to embrace the tax law changes. All of my clients paid me more to prepare their returns on account of the complexity introduced by TCJA.
1
One thing we can be sure of: the deficit is now much higher.
9
I did our taxes yesterday and I am still in shock. Here is what I learned:
1) As we own two rental houses, we were able to claim the QBI (Qualified Business Income) that gives you a "gift" of 20% on the net income of your rentals. As soon as I saw that, I wondered how Trump and his friends will benefit from the QBI as they are holding a ton of commercial real estate.
2) But although we received the QBI, our tax return was about $7000 less than it would have been under the old tax laws. Why is that?
a) We donated a substantial amount in cash and in kind to charities. In prior years, we could deduct this from our income taxes. The amount we could deduct this year was minimal. When I saw this, it became clear that this government is really against everything that helps the poor. First, it is working very hard to reduce government aid to the poor. And second, it also penalized individuals who give to charities that take care of the poor.
b) Last year, we had rather large professional expenses. Under the old laws, we could have deducted a certain percentage from our income taxes. This year, we could deduct absolutely nothing.
This new tax law is a scam that only benefits the politicians who passed it and the very wealthy in this country. What a scam.
94
Last year my wife (NYC Public School Teacher) and I (fitness instructor), living paycheck to paycheck had to pay a bit over $2,000, in combined state and federal taxes. Today we are using a payment plan to pay off a FEDERAL tax of $7,468. Yeah, tax break...liberal plot to lie about the president. Yeah.
62
Of a Blue state
Salt cap severed state and local taxes by over half.
Was under the previous AMT taper off.
Hit hard.
Know many who put off filing to today as why pay early?
Actually, the conclusion wont be known till October when the extensions run out.
2
@John Jorgensen
I concur.
The SALT cap also hit us hard. We felt targeted.
Private school advocates have their fingerprints all over the SALT cap. We live in a small, mixed-income town with very high public school taxes. 75% of our property taxes go to the public schools. Its a community decision. Some parents still send their kids to private schools, in addition to having to pay the local school tax, fine. I appreciate this local tax burden because its a way for us to contribute to the education of every child in our town, regardless of their ability to pay for school. The SALT cap is designed to undermine that public education. I'm still angry about that.
Conversely, I am okay with the mortgage deduction being taken off the table, even though that was a huge loss for us too. I accept it as a fair loss because it benefited only those of us with mortgages.
1
I searched the article to find the situation we experienced. Nowhere in this article does it mention the exemptions. It is the combination of eliminating the exemptions and capping deductions that got us a year-over-year tax increase with the same AGI.
34
Agreed. The article didn't really define tax rate such that readers could compare apples to apples. Our rate (percentage of taxes paid relative to adjusted gross income ) was slightly reduced from last year, but the changes to exemptions and deductibles meant a significant reduction in our refund.
11
Our income decreased by $6000, but our taxes went up over $3000. This is because, as a retired couple, we do not get the benefit of a child tax credit. We lost the personal exemptions. Over the past few years we have itemized our deductions, but this year, with the cap on our property and sales taxes and the loss of investment management expenses, we lost well over $3000 worth of deductions and ended up taking the standard deduction instead. It’s not just that we “believe” we didn’t get a tax cut; our taxes did go up.
75
People are only going to notice whether they paid less in tax from one year to the next if all other things in their financial lives are equal. If something else changed - you got a different job, a raise, had to start taking IRA distributions, sold a property, took unpaid leave, changed the amount going into retirement or HSAs etc - those things could all change your taxes in ways that make it a headache to tease out any effect of the Trump tax cut.
3
If people don’t know if they got a tax cut they probably don’t care about it
1
Please, stop thinking about this in terms of “I got a refund last year” and/or “I owed this year.” That doesn’t tell you if you actually paid more income tax.
Evaluate your effective tax rate.
Politics aside, looking at this from a strict “how much I paid on April 15” perspective is absolutely the Sri g way to figure out if you got a tax cut.
4
Is a tax cut what Americans really wanted or did most Americans want to pay less for health care, housing and their children's education? These are a few of many such trade offs that will be the future questions for most voters.
14
I don’t THINK my taxes went up. I know they did. I didn’t look at my refund, or my withholding. I looked at the line on my 1040 that says “tax.” I compared this year to 2016 (not 2017, because there were some unusual events that year). My tax went up slightly.
16
My husband and I are retired, live on a fixed income and have medical cost deductions that exceed the standard deduction. Our income is steady year to year as our deductions. This year we payed three times what we did last year. Tax deduction? I don’t think so.
42
Note: The huge ONE TIME increase in the standard deduction ($24,000 for married Joint, less for singles) is not currently indexed to increase with inflation, wage increases or anything else.
So, the majority of us may have gotten a tax cut this year, but next year it will be less, and the year after that, even less and so on until, in 4 years, there will be no tax cut, but a tax increase. Republicans understood and implemented this same trick on the middle class when they refused to increase the threshold for Alternative Minimum taxes for 20 years, ensnaring and increasing taxes on more and more people every year.
Just watch.
26
I had a large upsurge in income, a one-time thing for 2018. It will go back to normal this year (under $30k). But I was taxed at 22%, thus owing the IRS $10k+. Is that rate correct? I have to believe some millionaires didn't pay that much.
2
As a performer, a profession where I always have upwards of 15K in unreimbursed employee expenses, I/we most definitely did not get a tax cut. Thank you to NYS for picking up the slack.
14
We owed a LOT more this year at tax time--a lot. And we paid more than last year
Who am I to believe, the Trump administration or my lying eyes?
14
I did get a tax cut. I'm pretty sure. I got 3600 back on my taxes last year and this year I'm getting back 2200 but my take home increased because trump monkeyed with the withholding so you really do have to do the math to figure out how much.
The man is a liar. You SHOULD be distrustful of liars. That's just where we are. The POTUS is a liar.
51
I made less money and paid more in taxes.
33
Let’s put that $780 annual savings in perspective- which the author failed to do. With a bi-weekly paycheck that’s $30! That money was hardly noticed and quickly consumed by higher produce prices and other increases that resulted from the “president’s” other antics. And just wait to see what happens when he closes the border and produce skyrockets- or isn’t available. Of course his response will be “ let ‘em eat Cheeseburgers! “
19
We did not get much of a bump in salary, so the more that we DO owe in taxes basically cancels out that minimal wage increase.
Now, how about researching this article:
You (Probably) Are Paying Far More For Goods and Services Than Inflation Analysts Say You Are
Income inequality is getting worse.
Trump is a failure.
51
Everybody I know is paying thousands of dollars. Keep the $10.00 weekly paycheck bump, thank you. It’s meaningless.
18
No, I did not get a tax cut. I paid more taxes this year. I got nothing back at all..not a dime and I paid more. Even if you include the paltry $17 or so they supposedly did not take out of my check. I paid. Trump and his minions lied about this tax bill. Plain and simple.
22
In reviewing those graphs, don't forget that most people earning less than $30,000 annually don't pay any income tax. And it stands to reason that a large majority of high earners would get a tax cut. But in the war against Trump, reason doesn't matter.
7
@Paul: of course, while it appears to be true that people received more money than they felt, this article did not mention or account for increased costs due to tariffs or blue state penalties or, even more important, did not account for the massive hole that has been dug in the economy going forward. This is not fiscal conservatism.
7
Have you read the comments?
1
@Paul Stenquist I would interpret your post more along the line that in the war in defense of Trump, reason doesn't matter. Referring to the people making less than 30k not paying income taxes ignores their contributions to FICA and health programs, which are proportionally much higher than they are for those in higher income brackets, and defending high earners getting a tax cut simply because they are high earners flies in the face of actually doing any reasoning about why tax cuts are written into law. It does support the idea that Trump's tax cut was primarily for the rich, though.
1
The supposed "tax cuts" that Tankersley and Casselman quote from the Tax Policy Center's estimate note there should be a positive effect for 65% of taxpayers. Nevertheless, they ignore the taxpayers in the "blue states" that were negatively and deliberately affected by the changes in the tax laws, and make light of the enormous benefits that accrued to those with income that qualify them as the 1%.
They also ignore the fact that those who received smaller refunds or wound up owing the government additional money resulted from the meager decreases in taxes withheld from paychecks.
As a retired resident of one of those "blue states" for the very first time this year, my return required that I owed a sum that was staggering to see (after having regularly received refunds for the past 20+ years). Apparently, this was the result of the lowered withholding tax on my pension.
It will most informative to see the actual results of the new tax laws once all of the 2018 returns are filed. A chart by income bracket that shows the level of refunds paid vs.taxes owed would be much more beneficial than what survey respondents "believe" and what the hard data will show.
12
Even if you did receive a (usually very small) tax cut, remember that this is money you borrowed and will have to repay in due course.
Besides, your tax refund is much less than the debt you are responsible for. Your tax refund might be $700, but you actually borrowed more like $5000. The rest of the money went to the very rich.
Nothing wrong with borrowing money, so long as it is used for a constructive cause. In this case almost all the money went to the very rich and was used by companies to buy back their own stock, of all possible uses the least constructive.
10
We most certainly did not get a tax cut. Comparing 2017 to 2018, our AGI went up a little - 3.62%. Our net tax due went up by more than three times that - 11.41%. It would have gone up by a lot more if not for the child tax credit.
8
Interestingly, the richer ones got more of a cut (no surprise there) but proportionately fewer of them feel it. Only the lowest bracket correctly identified the amount of the tax cut.
Interesting. This means that Trump would have got more acknowledgement by giving cuts to the poor. Perhaps he should consider that next time...
7
Cuts for the middle class is what we would like.
Anyone who successfully got through sixth grade really doesn't have to "think" or "believe" if they did, or didn't, get a tax cut. Forget about what incremental tax bracket you're in, forget about SALT, forget about itemized versus standard deductions, and forget about the now extinct exemptions. Simply go to the bottom line, and calculate one's total tax as a percentage of one's taxable income. One simple calculation.
If one's overall average tax rate is lower in 2018 compared to 2017, then one's taxes truly did decline. And if not, then you bought the lie.
All things being equal, the real losers under the revised tax code are large families, due to the elimination of exemptions. Since many of those with large families are aligned with Republicans and Trump, and it's now 'Tax Day,' is it fair to ask, "Are you happy now?"
10
@Stop and Think Actually, It's not that simple. You must also include the impact of tax credits. The biggest change was the child tax credit, which increased significantly. Of course, that only affects you if you have children under 17.
We just paid our taxes. They went up 7%. This is real, not imagined.
22
I bet that most of those taxpayers who received a few extra dollars per week would gladly give up those few dollars, maybe even pay a bit more, in exchange for healthcare reform to give themselves and their loved ones peace of mind.
66
I must have missed that or perhaps my refund check is in the mail. Just kidding...even after payroll deductions for withholding, and making extra estimated tax payments (from IRA distributions) during the year, the loss of the SALT deductions and other deductions cost my wife and I $12K more in taxes in 2018. In 2017, we got a small three figure refund. Our accountant recommends even higher withholding and quarterly estimated payments to avoid a higher bill next year. No, I'm not buying it.
25
Denying that most people got tax relief is like saying "I don't care what scientist say, global warming is a hoax".
The truth is the truth even when we don't care for the people who say it.
5
What strikes me about the graph in the article is that as a family's income increased, they were more likely to have received a tax cut. In my mind this is backwards - more help should go in the lower income brackets, who need it more.
14
We are retired and reasonably affluent but not super rich. With no change in income our taxes increased by $7,000!
Please explain how this is a tax cut!
88
We actually paid more tax this year due to the SALT cap. We live in a blue state but don't earn enough to trigger the AMT.
And due to the budget cuts we'll be getting worse services. It's a lose-lose.
40
My effective tax rate went up about 2.5% in 2018. Confirmed by an accountant.
29
I see that, the poorer you are the lesser the benefits of this so called tax cuts are. I'm retired, didn't change my withholding, my income is practically the same as last year, but I got a much smaller refund, while Jared Kushner hasn't paid ANY taxes for 3 years.
19
This was a red state tax cut and with SALT a blue state hike - exactly as the drafters intended.
Between taxes, disaster relief and immigrant resettlement, Trump governs to pit half the country against the other half.
34
@Jack I live in a red state and I paid more. A lot more.
9
My federal tax increased by approximately $20k. I was effected by SALT and the change that did not allow alimony as a deduction.
18
Last year I got a rebate of about $1,200. This year I have to pay $4,000. I cannot recall ever having a tax bill in excess of a few hundred dollars.
Oh yeah, I'm one of those "coastal elites" with high SALT.
My weekly paycheck increased by about $14.
Face it, I, and many like me, got a very real tax hit this year.
116
What needs addressing is the incredibly large difference in the tax bracket between those making between $9,500 - $38,700 which is set at 12%, and then almost DOUBLES to 22% for those making $38,701 - $82,500. It then somehow only slowly creeps up in small increments - 24%, 32%, 35% to a maximum of a measly 37% for those making $500,001 or more.
To say that most people got a tax break is to say most should be grateful they were thrown an extra crumb of bread. Most still cannot pay their bills.
21
@Costanzawallet - With the standard deduction, the 22% bracket doesn't kick in until you make over $38,700 + $12,000.
1
@Jonathan That is no different than the effect of the standard deduction on the lower end of all the other tax brackets, so it is irrelevant.
1
My take-home pay is 2% less than before the changes implemented March/April 2018
My Federal 2018 tax refund is 37% less than 2017 returns
My State refund is 40% lower
What does that sound like??
14
As a professional tax preparer, I know that the majority of Americans judge their results by the amount of their refunds or balance due, even though these metrics are completely meaningless. The only number that matters is your total tax liability, but very few can even define that. I got a tax cut of about one hundred dollars. Probably most believe they did not get one because they do not own a microscope. Unlike real estate developers who have made an absolute killing. If we could see their tax returns.
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@Chuck Burton Our total tax liability went up by 8% year over year from 2017 to 2018 due to the SALT deduction cap which has a significant impact for citizens living/working in New York. Maybe you're right in that people don't notice but almost everyone I know- from low income to middle class- looks at their return which shows taxable income, deductions and total tax rate.
2
No, I didn't! And it is not about W4 withholding. The actual tax has gone up more than 10% because of SALT limitations. So please stop being the stick-it-to-the-blue-state-middle-class narrative
55
The TCJA was bread crumbs for workers and a bonanza for fat cats.
that's all the Dems need to say.
We need to restore a serious AMT, at 33% for all income over $500,000 (other than GO muni bond interest, exempt by reciprocity) . That includes the entire bundle of loopholes and tax preferences, such as carried interest, oil depletion allowance, QBID, commodity profits and capital gains for the 1%.
36
I am no longer amazed that many US citizens are totally ignorant about income taxes. I also think that many politicians like it that way because then they can twist the knife in any which way they want to. But I also wonder how many people elected to Congress actually do their own taxes. Can the NYTimes find out how the members of the Senate and the House figure out and file their tax returns? It might be eye-opening.
11
My wife and I are retired and living on SS and a company pension. We own two homes. One is in Massachusetts and the other is in Maine. Both are high property tax states. With no change in income, our federal taxes increased $8,000, giving us one more reason to hate Trump and the Republicans in Congress.
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@Larry Lief
Shouldn't you be a little upset at the States that are imposing those high property taxes?
If those taxes were lower that would be a dollar-for dollar decrease - much better than just a deduction on your federal taxes.
2
@Larry Lief
Our income went down and we owed more than double what we have owed over the past few years, almost $10K. We lost some deductions such as state and local taxes. And my husband is already withholding at the single rate, no exemptions.
To those who complain about high local taxes - well, that's one reason why Massachusetts have the best public schools in the country and the schools compare favorably internationally, as well. That's what I get for my high local taxes, and I'm glad to pay them. It drives our strong economy and high standard of living here. For my federal taxes, I get a highly dysfunctional government led by a madman and endless wars.
29
@TDC, why should we be upset when we get good schools, good services and a strong safety net? What we should be upset about -- and I am -- is this new double taxation on SALT amounts over $10K, so that we send even more of our hard-earned money to feckless red states.
6
The point isn't that most people got a tax cut, but how much of a cut? If middle earners got an extra $65 per month or so in their pocket, then another 2/5 got even less, with many only getting a $50 extra, in total per year, in their pocket. It's not that people are so gullible, it is that the cuts were so small for the majority of Americans to not even notice a difference in their checks. The tax cut benefited the well off and corporations to an overwhelming degree. Most middle and lower income people have lost because the tax cut came at the price of a trillion more in debt and now a need for more budget cuts to programs that would benefit them to pay for it.
24
Most people won’t itemize and therefore it is recommended to withhold at married zero
If your spouse works and earns less than you do, Both of you should withhold at single zero
My household paid $12,000 less this year in federal taxes due to the Amt.
We did not itemize even though we paid $36k in state and property taxes. It was the Amt that made the difference and we never realized that we never got the salt deductions in the past.
Our good fortune is due entirely to those who earn less than we do who now must pay more and that is a concern. Not good for our children or the future. Vote blue.
12
I had an extensive dialogue with my accountant in the middle of last year when he responded to my query to project my 2018 taxes based on the changes to the tax law. With my family's income and allowable deductions steady year to year, it proved a relatively simple and straightforward analysis. And as predicted then, my filing this year showed very clearly that my wife and I owed roughly 10% more than we did before the change in the law. The accountant said that about 70% of his clients are in the same strata of income and typical deductions for that level of income -- and thus were also going to pay more.
But adding insult to injury, I read last week about 60 of the Fortune 500 companies who either paid no taxes for 2018 or in fact received a refund or tax credit. In short, my wife and I paid more income tax than Amazon as a result of tax "reform."
Spare me from any further reform. Beyond the incalculable long-term damage to the country from ever-growing, unsustainable national debt, the tax changes were simply inequitable and gave even further advantage to corporate America and the wealthiest among our citizenry.
Polling data won't change the facts.
171
Good article. I'm one of those average types who got a whopping $70/month extra. I didn't even notice it. And while I support putting our business taxes in line with global norms, I see no reason why those making millions of bucks a year can't pay more than 32%. I doubt they'd notice it either.
How the Feds choose to spend what we give them also needs some changes. Wouldn't it be nice to see an increase in science or medial research instead of buying the military another airplane?
11
@Amanda Yea who needs another military plane, especially considering the Utopia we live in. The world is completely at peace, why don't we just start reducing our military, considering there will not be another event where we need planes.
Instead of complaining about the military, why don't you complain about spending millions on research on whether or not cocaine influences sex in animals. Government waste billions and billions of our money on nothing, but let's complain about the military. good call.
2
@Amanda - The rate for income over $450K is 37%, not 32%. If it is investment income, there is an additional 3.8% Medicare tax, bringing the total rate to 40.8%.
1
We spend more on defense the next 10 nations combined—and most of those nations are allies.
Contrary to the authors assertions, I most certainly did NOT get a tax cut. And I am not alone. As the deduction for unreimbursed work expenses was eliminated, this year's bill was painfully much more. This is not mere perception, but a FACT.
56
$780 extra on $75,000 is not much (1.04%) of a windfall, especially when you see how much the ultra-wealthy and just plain rich were rewarded. Factor in the huge increase in the deficit and a relentless attack on social programs for the powerless poor... so same as it ever was -- and way past time for REAL tax reform.
28
Retiree with an additional $500 in income due to pension withholding change paid an additional $635 in taxes due to loss of deductions.
21
The only goal was to manipulate the system to transfer wealth from the majority of Americans to the wealthiest and corporations and to transfer any debt created by small tax reductions to the US credit card. So those who did see modest reduction in taxes also see the total US debt increase. The biggest issue is that the money redistribution didn’t result in any kind of investment for the future but was more like giving an addict a short term high.
But then again, who cares as long as I/WE get more.
It will be interesting to see how charities fare in this new system.
9
I think perception and reality would have been more aligned if they hadn’t changed withholding in an effort to make the change appear more substantial than it was. Come tax time, far too many people were under withheld and those accustomed to (and heavily reliant upon) big refunds found themselves owing instead.
8
I paid $6000 more in federal taxes than last year, with $4000 less gross income. Yes, I'm in California and the $10k cap hurt me. I make $130,000, which is far from rich in Los Angeles (where I grew up and care for my elderly mother, in case you feel I should simply move away). All of my coworkers similarly paid more taxes.
107
@Christine I agree with your disgust with the law, but as a professional tax preparer I have to say that your numbers are impossible and cannot be right. How could you have lost almost 40k in SALT deductions? Do you pay over 50k in property tax and state income tax? No, you do not. I see many on the right publishing phony numbers. Let’s not join them.
7
I have a problem with the following paragraph: "To a large degree, the gap between perception and reality on the tax cuts appears to flow from a sustained — and misleading — effort by liberal opponents of the law to brand it as a broad middle-class tax increase."
As somebody who did tax returns for many people this year, I can tell you this is not the actual reason. Many people who got refunds last year ended up owing money this year. It seems to be due to a change in withholding. The IRS withheld less money because taxes are slightly lower.
However, they reduced the withholding too much in many cases, leading to people owing money at the end of the year. In fact, this withholding change is an acceptable reason for getting a waiver on penalties if one owed more than $1000 on their 2018 taxes. When somebody is given a bill in April instead of a check, it's pretty hard to convince them that they somehow saved money, even if it's true.
219
@Matthew I agree that the way the cuts were rolled out (lower withholding, in some cases translating into lower refunds or unexpected tax bills) was also a substantial factor. We actually discussed that dynamic in a story last month (link below). But Democratic messaging also seems to have had a substantial impact. Prominent Democrats claimed that the law amounted to a middle-class tax increase, and our survey results show that their voters believed them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/business/economy/tax-refund-republicans.html
15
@Benjamin Casselman Um, as a middle class household in CA we can say NO we didn't get a tax cut, we paid more taxes. No no no. I imagine we are not alone in this. Maybe the lower class folks got more back, but this household did not.
19
@Matthew Agree. But what do you think the motivation of the IRS was when they incorrectly provided suggested changes to withholding?
a) too incompetent to understand their own tax code
or
b) intentionally trying to promote the Dem propaganda
3
Owing vs. your net tax are not the same thing.
We were fortunate last year, but my taxes definitely went up. I compared the 2017 and 2018 numbers and I paid more. If the well to do got a tax cut, I missed it.
23
No, no, no. How is it that everyone I know is paying? And how is it that we are now trillions more in debt?
86
We owed 4K and we're not wealthy by any stretch.
62
Along the many people, I got the surprise of having to pay taxes on 1099 work. Even though I had a large net loss from all my work, the previously untaxed 1099 miscellaneous income is now considered a company, making me liable for employment taxes. I don’t like it.
11
@Chad That's not a new requirement. If you did not previously report 1099 miscellaneous income, then you were evading taxes.
4
Sure they may have gotten a tax cut, but one that's meaningless. $780 bucks is not a windfall, no matter who you are. You have to start up higher in the tax brackets for it to be a meaningful tax break - one which most of middle America can only look up at.
47
The author should present more analysis of how to determine whether a taxpayer received a tax cut or tax increas. Arguably, the only way to determine if a taxpayer received a tax cut or tax increase would be to analyze the taxpayer's 2018 return under current law and under pre TCJA law.
8
@James Grosser - Yes, that is correct.
My own case would be difficult to figure any other way because my income more than doubled between 2017 and 2018. I also made three 6-month property tax payments in 2017, so I only made one in 2018, so I would have to subtract the effect of that as well.
1
My $64 a month tax cut doesn’t begin to cover the loss of my $2500+ refund. I am a teacher and am tired of being on the losing end of everybody’s tax plan.
164
I would gladly give back any tax cut in exchange for a functioning government that serves its citizens.
293
@caljn: Yes. More specifically, I would happily pay more in taxes to ensure a better safety net for everyone falling through Trumpian cracks. More to ensure everyone gets the healthcare they need. And more to protect our environment. And more to ensure schools aren't over-crowded. Etc.
20
@caljn,
why is this comment not a "NYT Pick"?
9
@Anne and @caljn:
A thousand times yes. I wish I could recommend your comments ten times.
7
Our household was one of the 11 million that the SALT cap affected. Oh, and our mortgage interest would have been nice to deduct as well. It was teeth and nails until the very end of our return prep regarding whether we were going to owe tax or not.
Thanks, Republicans. Sure glad you "saved" me money and left the bill for the grandkids.
143
@Jeff K
If you had SALT income over $10,000, which would indicate to me that you are rather wealthy, aren’t you the very people the Dems/libs are targeting with their “Soak the Rich” mantra?
6
@Jeff K
I cannot believe you’re complaining about ONLY being able to deduct $750,000 of your mortgage interest.
750k is the limit. Sorry you have so much money and such a massive mortgage this is the same thing as not being able to deduct anything. Hopefully your diamond shoes aren’t too tight too!
1
My husband and I received a $3,000+ refund in 2018, but our tax bill this year was $2,980. Nothing changed, except the Trump "tax cut." Hardly a tax cut--more like a penalty for earning respectable, middle-class salaries and living in a progressive city.
164
@Patrick
I'm not finished yet, but in 2017 (AGI $61,810), I paid $3483 and in 2018 (AGI $51,851) it will be $5556. I question the accuracy of the reporting in this article . . . I don't believe that in the $50,000-$75,000 group, 81.7% got a tax cut (my group). And . . . so interesting that the IRS will not be able to produce its own "on-line tax forms" . . . the collection of taxes has turned into a for-profit activity for HRBlock, TurboTax etc.
68
@Patrick
Could that be because you were affected by the elimination of the SALT deduction of amounts over $10,000?
6
@John Your point about the IRS a free tax prep program are spot on. Same thing is going on at NOAA and OUR National Weather Service as this administration tries to turn THAT over to a provate company. You can look it up if you don't believe me.
10