Income | The Issue Spotter

March 13, 2018

Who Gets the Big 199A Tax Loophole?

In December 2017, Congress signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) into law. It was largely unpopular for most Americans but has left some people and companies quite pleased—the ultra wealthy ones like the Koch Brothers and Pfizer. The TCJA has lowered the individual income tax from 39.6% to 37%, lowered the corporate income tax from 35% to 21%, and doubled the estate tax’s exemption to $11 million per person and $22 million per couple. One of the most glaring issues with the TCJA comes from a loophole created in the Internal Revenue Code section 199A Qualified Business Income. Corporate income is a type of business income that is taxed twice federally, once at the corporate level and once at the shareholder level. However, pass-through income is a type of business income that skips the corporate level tax and jumps straight into the owner’s personal tax returns. Section 199A potentially allows a major tax deduction for certain “qualified” pass-through income. One question is who will qualify for this deduction, the majority of Americans or only the wealthiest among them—my pennies are on the latter. 199A—Some of What is Known The new law offers a 20% deduction for pass-through entities, [read more]

January 31, 2018

A Rushed Effort to Initiate Tax Legislation

On Wednesday, September 27, 2017, the White House and Congressional Republicans revealed a new tax plan. Obtained and reported by the Washington Post, Congress released a nine-page document titled, “Unified Framework for Fixing Our Broken Tax Code,” which summarizes the proposed tax code reformations. With this tax plan, President Trump expects to bring “revolutionary change” to the United States, especially to the middle class and American businesses. One of the single greatest revisions that Congress’ plan proposes is the transition of the U.S. from a worldwide to a territorial based tax system. That is, the United States would depart from its position to tax U.S. citizens and corporations on worldwide income. To better explain how the current worldwide tax system works, here is an example. Currently, a U.S. Corporation that receives a dividend from a foreign corporation will be taxed both in that foreign country and by the U.S. Under this worldwide system, a U.S. corporation is allowed to credit a portion of the foreign corporate income tax, or, “deemed to have paid” a portion of the foreign income tax, if the U.S. corporation owns at least 10% voting stock in the foreign corporation (S 902(A) of the Internal Revenue [read more]