US Senate passes sweeping tax overhaul bill | Hacker News Reader

US Senate passes sweeping tax overhaul bill

bbc.com

80 pointsbenevol111 comments

For those who didn't watch the proceedings, https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DQAYbwpU8AELZa0.jpg was one of the actual pages of the bill, quite literally handwritten scribbled margin notes.

Source?

https://twitter.com/SenatorDurbin/status/936738041087037440

edit: https://twitter.com/SenatorTester/status/936748480000921600

S/he gave you a source. If you don't think it's adequate you should say why. PBS has a good reputation for veracity.

I saw that image popping up in my twitter feed, but I just assumed it was a parody :|

The law making process is so clearly broken. I see this as a contributing factor to the long gradual decline of the role of the USA in the world. The reemergence of China should be engendering a positive spirit of lifting the game, not a money grabbing exercise.

If you can’t make evidence based laws for the people then society will be warped into some dysfunctional dystopian end game.

Following your logic, China is better off because instead of having one party protesting but failing to reject a law promoted by the elections-winning other party, it's just better to have one single party control everything.

Sorry but I find this just mindblowing.

The parent comment is saying that the economic success of China should be encouraging America to step it's game up, not that it should become a single party system.

I'd argue that berating economic success as the main metric for measuring a country's success is precisely what is slowly but surely eroding the West's precious institutions.

Since when people just want to live comfortable lives and leave their collective fate to be decided by a minority whose interests do not necessarily align with the people's interests (otherwise, they would just allow fair elections).

Small example: of course, country-wide surveillance à la China would lead to "economic success", do you think it's criticized because it would lead to mass poverty ?

It would lead to a perfectly stable future for the population, with ever improving quality of life and security. The problem, as you may guess, lies elsewhere.

I’d be the first to say there are a bunch of serious problems posed by the one-party system in China, but getting important projects done quickly is not one of them.

The person you replied to does not say that China's political system is better in any way, simply that if such a system (single party authoritarian government) can out develop the US then there must be some serious improvements to be had for the US's democratic system.

In other words, if China can give their people what they want without fair elections or due process or freedom from corruption then our democratic system which ostensibly includes those things must be seriously broken. That does not mean authoritarianism is better. At least that's how I read the comment.

I have to admit I slightly misread the parent comment, but still: as long it's not a democracy, how can you consider that China "can give their people what they want".

The "they" cannot be referring the people of China, or the majority because China is just not a democracy.

This is the main difference between a country which holds free elections every 4 years, and a single-party country.

Chinese middle class is booming. US is going through the opposite.

To a large extent, the broken parts of US politics stem from the lack of actual written rules. Many things that should be codified are actually "gentlemen's agreements", where people agree to act in good faith. Today's show on the Senate floor was the logical conclusion of an entire political party deciding to break every aspect of that unstated agreement,

AFAICT, this is the same in most of the world, a lot of the political and government process is based on people acting "properly" beyond the minimal requirements of the law.

There is often a difference between "legal" and "moral", so to say.

Oh right and Obamacare didn’t do the exact same thing? What goes around..

Please stop repeating that obvious canard. It's insulting to your fellow HNers to repeat known counterfactual claims.

US politics is broken because the majority is being under represented both in Congress and in presidential election.

We should work together on getting rid of the ancient and manipulated election system and revamp it with a modern proportional representative system.

I think Mitch McConnell will go down as a historically terrible senator. He has an absolutely single-minded focus on winning legislative "victories" without any consideration of the actual merits of what he's corralling votes for or agaisnt.

Sounds like a prosecutor that focuses on convictions and personal record and not on truth and justice. This, the lack of pursuing truth and justice, is what is eroding our society.

The Republicans have been so skilled at digital jerrymandering that we have digital technology delivering us a single party state. Only mass voter outrage will be enough to overcome a decade of very effective data driven jerrymandering.

It's actually spelled "gerrymandering".

You might have learned that by now if you weren't so busy spreading dumb conspiracy theories on the internet.

https://www.texastribune.org/2017/08/15/federal-court-invali...

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/north-c...

https://www.salon.com/2016/11/22/unconstitutional-gerrymande...

Are you really that ignorant or are you complicit with these crimes?

gerrymandering actually only comes into play within the house. if the vote for the house was done by a purely popular basis without regards to districting and state boundaries, the republicans would still control the house. However, their majority would be far slimmer[1].

overall these comparisons are complicated as you often have situations where candidates from the same party compete against each other, or face no challenger

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Represe...

I know it takes 100°C for water to boil, but how much does the US need?

Keep in mind, Trump is not the source of the problem, he is one of the (reinforcing) symptoms of a host of underlying systemic societal issues.

What a horrible process. You don't get good legislation written by ramming it through without time to evaluate the consequences of the law.

"We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it away from the fog of the controversy."

A comment about a bill that took almost a year to draft and which was passed under regular order. And now hypocrites who used that quote to attack Pelosi are supporting this abominable bill, which was passed without any kind of analysis and without even the slightest pretense that anyone voting for it had read it.

The legislative process is always a mess. No matter how much we pretend (in one direction, because double standards), no significant law passes without essentially indefensible actions "behind the scenes". We may feel that one bill is super-duper and the other one is terrible, but we shouldn't let that blind us to the inevitably shabby nature of the process. Likewise, selectively noticing that nature for the purpose of criticizing particular bills makes for unconvincing political argument.

Tonight I'm thinking about the Affordable Care Act, which McCain piously invoked as an example of the kind of unseemly rushing and ramming through that he disapproved of when he voted down the recent health care bill. The ACA took about a year to pass, spent an extensive amount of time in committee, incorporated hundreds of amendments, and had fundamentally the same structure from the beginning of the process to the end. This bill was cobbled together in a matter of weeks and was substantially altered while the Senate was in session preparing to vote on it. The hypocrisy is mind-boggling.

One of the problems of US is the fact that protesting is virtually impossible. Unless there are 1,000,000 people in the streets of DC for two weeks, no one will care. Protesting in your city has little impact on the federal level. Also The general lack of public spaces makes it hard. And the fact that the police cracks down pretty hard on things after the first display of some sort of "disobedience". Look at the photos from protests in like France. Shit on fire, people throwing shit, but the police doesn't shoot them.

Dystopian police state here we come. Fuck I hope at least there will be a real NeoTokyo in the future.

>Fuck I hope at least there will be a real NeoTokyo in the future.

This is my hope as well. I mean, if the future is going to be one big dysoptian hellscape, then I feel that having a cyberpunk noir metropolis to play around in would be only fair.

If you want to understand why protesting can be inneffective, I highly recommend "Twitter and Tear Gas" by Zeynep Tufekci (https://www.twitterandteargas.org/ with CC version available - but buy it!).

One important factor: protests are only effective if they demonstrate the ability of the movement to affect elections. There are multiple reasons why the senate is not concerned and they're all... highly concerning.

> One important factor: protests are only effective if they demonstrate the ability of the movement to affect elections. There are multiple reasons why the senate is not concerned and they're all... highly concerning.

Indeed. Furthermore an angry mob literally at the foot steps of the capitol. For a month. Angry as shit crowd. They need to pass through you. There aren't enough cops to arrest all of you in the entirety of the DC area. Don't break laws though. Wait for them to do that.

Furthermore, I've been intrigued by Vaclav Havels (there were more people involved) idea of Parallel Polis. https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/vaclav-havels-le...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_Polis

Basically slowly create a parallel government that offers competing services. You can start small. Offer healthcare at competitive price for those who pay you "taxes". If I could pay two grand a year and get some perks (some sort of healthcare and over time more) out of it I would definitely consider it. Provide accredited education (over internet? idk). I believe having read somewhere that the US legal framework allows for this if you establish yourself as a Native American tribe as they can get out of quite a few obligations to the state and federal governments.

There is merit to this idea and it has the potential to be highly effective but also highly destablizing, in both positive and negative ways.

Some destabilization is possibly needed. Like you have to raise to rebuild.

I quite agree but if I were to go into detail about my thoughts on this it would quickly be flagged into invisibility :)

You're welcome to drop me a line.

The thing is protest has been criminalized. The people who protested Trump's inauguration are facing what amounts to life in federal prison. Yes there was one car damaged but the Nazis who's protest lead to the death of that young woman face no charges.

And the Baltimore rioters? Police actually let them destroy property. And who is facing life in prison protesting the Trump inauguration?

And what was the purpose of protesting the inauguration? I get it you are MAD and you want to break things.

But did you vote? How many of those protesters did? Statistically, very few.

You get the government you deserve.

"who is facing life in prison protesting the Trump inauguration?"

Here you go:

"More than 200 people who were arrested on Trump’s inauguration day risk up to 60 years of jail. Meanwhile, the white supremacists in Charlottesville walk free"

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/22/donald...

You may not be aware that people are being charged not so much with breaking things but being part of a crowd in which some people broke things. And yes, the potential sentences run into decades despite the extremely minor nature of the property damage.

A slanted editorial but one grounded in fact rather than a particular ideology: http://georgetownvoice.com/2017/12/01/j20-defendants-face-a-...

This bill doesn't fundamentally change very much besides the corporate tax rate, so the explosive reaction seems unnecessary. You aren't going to get a million people in the street because their tax bill went up, or down, several hundred dollars, which is what this amounts to for most people.

It changes a lot more than that. Although we don't know precisely what, because the House and Senate bills need to be reconciled (or the House will just pass the Senate bill) and the Senate bill was literally written on the floor tonight. Nobody has done a serious analysis of its effects. What we do know suggests that it will increase the uninsured rate substantially, increase the deficit dramatically, and trigger automatic cuts to Medicare and other programs.

increase the uninsured rate substantially

If people choose to drop insurance because they aren't mandated to buy it, then it is on them

increase the deficit dramatically

certainly true

trigger automatic cuts to Medicare

This is the only reason I'm replying, because there is no way that it will happen. No one wants cuts, and it would be political poison. Claiming it is fear mongering (not you, but the people using it to attack the bill).

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DP_dYbWW4AA0-8h.jpg

Mitch McConnell's word is worth nothing. Republicans are already talking about "entitlement reform", aka cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Any hope that the GOP will avoid a particular course of action because it's "political suicide" should be dead and buried after the last year.

As for the uninsured rate, eliminating the mandate will not only cause people to voluntarily drop insurance but also involuntarily push people out of insurance due to the resulting increase in premiums. That's what happens when you kick out one of the legs of a three-legged stool.

Republicans may well attempt to cut/reform entitlements, but it won't be because of the tax bill triggering mandatory cuts. That is the fear mongering piece.

The effect of eliminating the mandate is unclear. People paying the fine to not have insurance will surely stop. People who have insurance now, should keep it. But it the insurance is so worthless to them that think it isn't worth having, hopefully it will motivate smarter fix than simply mandating it. Poor people will still continue to get their insurance paid for.

Because of the PAYGO law, it looks like Medicare would be cut by $25B in the first year:

https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/advocacy/info-2017/sen...

Yes, that is what I was specifically addressing (see link), and it is nonsense.

The elimination of the State and Local Tax deductions will be huge for California and New York.

They weren't eliminated, but ended up capping them at $10k.

see, you read the senate bill that was proposed yesterday. the current bill that passed, afaict, eliminated SALT completely.

Hrrmm, you must have read the bill 12 hours ago, before Susan Collins got her amendment added.

The Senate tax bill will include my SALT amendment to allow taxpayers to deduct up to $10,000 for state and local property taxes.

https://twitter.com/SenatorCollins/status/936647024417615872

But as others have pointed out, this still can change as it goes to reconciliation.

State and local property taxes, which I don't believe were ever in question. I'm fairly confident SALT, in this context, referred to the deductibility of state and local income taxes.

You are right that state income tax is no longer deductible. SALT in the Collins context was referring to just property tax.

> Protesting in your city has little impact on the federal level.

Sure, if you're trying to effect change on a federal level. Do you think that marching in a small town in France or Egypt would have a different effect?

Marching in your town is worth it for changing laws in your town, or possibly your county. Protesting at the state capital would be effective for changing laws in your state. Protesting in DC would be effective for changing the laws in the country.

Is any of that surprising?

Edit: I suppose it is a little surprising as the US and Canada are the only two 'free' countries as big as we are that allow protesting in any real capacity. China and Russia are out of that category (China pretty much always, Russia for most of recent history.) It does make protesting more difficult than in smaller countries, but what's the alternative? Every single protest in every city should be recognized by the federal government?

> protesting is virtually impossible

I call my state and federal representatives and have built rapport with their SLAs. I find my input valued and well considered.

My district is a densely-populated one in Manhattan. Work brings me to the Bay Area, where I also conference with representatives. I am usually the only person calling or caring about most technical issues.

The problem isn't imagined bans on peaceful protest. It is apathy, laziness and an unwillingness to independently engage.

As an activist (both on the street and in legislative fora) that's garbage. People absolutely work on all phases of the democratic process here.

> As an activist that's garbage

What’s garbage?

> People absolutely work on all phases of the democratic process here

One, which here? Two, I think we are saying the same thing. (OP said “protesting is virtually impossible.” I said that impossibility is a myth.)

Garbage saying that people are apathetic and lazy.

Here in the Bay Area.

Sorry if I offended you. When I speak to our Bay Area representatives about privacy, Internet regulation and related commercial matters, I’m usually alone. Few are politically involved, in the Bay Area, on non-social topics.

Thanks for the clarification. Considering the existence of the EFF and the lobbying ability of all the large tech firms, I'm not that surprised if grassroots lobbying is a bit thin on the ground on such topics. I know that people show up to lobby on privacy issues at city council meetings here in Oakland.

Protest what? Trump could pardon a turkey and it would seem to inspire riots.

> protesting is virtually impossible

And look how fast the discussion of an issue (this post) of this gravity is quickly flagged into invisibility.

> Unless there are 1,000,000 people in the streets of DC

Im no expert but it seems to me its pretty doable. In France, we sometimes have 2 million people protesting.

I'm a temp immigrant in US, who is equally frustrated with the Trump hating democrat supporters, the Hillary-hating Trump supporters and the neutrals.

Based on what I know from my own small sample set of data, makes me believe that the the Trump vote base is strong, and considerable in number, and is super happy with this tax overhaul.

They see it as "Trump kept his promise", by simplifying the tax code, reducing taxes on his vote base, increasing taxes on the tax bracket that trump voters considered to be something like "free money mongers" and of course, its going to affect the democrat strongholds.

What I find funny, is that many Trump haters are still starting a conversation by presuming that majority of the country hates this tax reform (its probably the top 10 most populous cities of US and California). I think people need to go out of democrat stronghold areas and get some real feedback.

I'm curious to see how this sweeping tax overhaul works out in the long run

I'm terribly surprised that McCain went along with this legislative process. No one had time to read the bill - or even have the bill itself - when the votes were cast. Just makes no sense.

What kind of country behaves that way?

A failed one.

I think the US doesn't have enough accountability for its leaders. These guys just come in, serve the lobbyists and keep renewing their terms. They say one thing and do another.

Is there any consequence of this directly to the congress people? Not really, cuz come election time, they'll lie through their teeth to get votes, all the while forgetting that they are the ones who did the damage in the first place.

They should either ban lobbying or have penalties for congresspeople who lie to their electorates. As it stands, I can't see that happening.

It's sickening how large corporations make more and more money but pay almost no taxes because (through the money) they have so much influence on politics.

And yet corporations have many of the same rights as people do these days.

One of the main reasons large corporations pay no tax is that they hide the money in other countries with lower corporate tax rates. You can argue that it is a race to the bottom, or ineffective for other reasons, but the lower corporate tax rate is an attempt to deal with the issue, and get a cut of that money, albeit at a lower rate.

I think we need to talk about this in more detail.

Let's say some company like Google has income all across the world. People click ads in Germany. Some German company pays Google €1. Google doesn't want to pay US taxes on it. It "parks" this money in Germany.

I think that's different from let's say some American company has some income $100 from another American company. But we set up a fake company in a tax free country and says we had to spend $100 in "intellectual property" thus our profit is zero so we don't pay taxes.

I am not an accountant so please correct me if I am wrong in these scenarios.

I don't quite understand tax policy to be honest. For example: tax rate. Is it really just random numbers that people agree on? It just doesn't seem any of this is based on science. More like everyone is trying to get what they can.

Here is another one: if I click an ad on Google for Google Chrome, does Google pay itself for the ad amount? If so, do they owe sales tax on that transaction? How foes this work? Is it possible for us to tax revenue instead of taxing profits (perhaps at a lower rate)?

I think part of our problem is our addiction to deductions and credits. If people want to simplify the tax code, we should try to eliminate deductions and credits.

The New York times walks through an example using Apple and iTunes. It is much worse than example of parking a Euro in the country it was earned.

For instance, one of Apple’s subsidiaries in Luxembourg, named iTunes S.à r.l., has just a few dozen employees, according to corporate documents filed in that nation and a current executive. The only indication of the subsidiary’s presence outside is a letterbox with a lopsided slip of paper reading “ITUNES SARL.”

Luxembourg has just half a million residents. But when customers across Europe, Africa or the Middle East — and potentially elsewhere — download a song, television show or app, the sale is recorded in this small country, according to current and former executives. In 2011, iTunes S.à r.l.’s revenue exceeded $1 billion, according to an Apple executive, representing roughly 20 percent of iTunes’s worldwide sales.

The advantages of Luxembourg are simple, say Apple executives. The country has promised to tax the payments collected by Apple and numerous other tech corporations at low rates if they route transactions through Luxembourg. Taxes that would have otherwise gone to the governments of Britain, France, the United States and dozens of other nations go to Luxembourg instead, at discounted rates.

And that's the simple part, read the "Double Irish" section, which is an even worse tactic.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax-strate...

But if private citizens were able to park their income offshore I am fairly sure the response wouldn't be to lower income taxes.

Aren't there agreements between the US and other countries that prevents or limits double taxation for private citizens? Is there anything analogous for companies?

It is a matter of complexity, and quantity. Wealthy private citizens do park money offshore via trusts and other mechanisms. It wouldn't be a good trade-off to lower tax rates to lure it back, because it is at such a smaller scale than the corporate parking.

I'm coming from a very opposite perspective. All corporate taxes are silly, just tax the people that make income.

The pendulum swings back and forth. It's not the end of the earth, it's not going to bring utopia.

Can we please use Hacker News for technical issues?

Hacker News should focus on important issues, which are not always technical. The Senates's tax overhaul is an important issue. The outrageous behavior of the Republican Senators to get the bill passes is an important issue.

This will go down in history as one of the most grotesque things to ever have happened in American politics. And that's saying a lot, there is some stiff competition for sure.

Annnnd they pulled the AMT repeal.

Gotta tax those rich people

Minor upside: it still has to go through reconciliation and this Congress has proven itself expert in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. But yeah, this is an economic dumpster fire.

This bill is rural state senators and large corporations robbing middle class in industrialized areas.

I don’t know why anyone is worried about this - the worse the corruption and give away to the 0.01% the bigger the blowback. The end result is the 0.01% are going to pay far more than if they had been reasonable.

The standard operating procedure when American oligarchs feel threatened is war and racial/ethnic/religious division to distract the rubes. So probably quite a few people should be worried.

I like your optimism though.

This sort of thing has been used for the last 40 years and its effectiveness is drawing to an end. Nobody believes anything the oligarchs say anymore.

You can only pull on a rubber band for so long before it eventually breaks and smacks you in the face. The band is now very, very tight. The next economic downturn risks unleashing something that no amount of money can control.

> Nobody believes anything the oligarchs say anymore.

And yet Donald Trump was elected president.

The fact that people put a game show host of his ilk in that office is the death of the institutional canary.

He was not elected because of support of the oligarchs. Jeb Bush was the sort of President they wanted.

I think people underestimate how much of a break Donald is from the past - not because of who he is, but because of the way he was elected. Someone with real political skill is going to emerge from this desire for major change and if you are a member of the 0.01% you should be worried.

> The next economic downturn risks unleashing something that no amount of money can control.

More like we'll be in such debt that no amount of tax increase will save us for decades? if you think some how people are going to suddenly revolt against the system then I wouldn't hold my breath... I didn't see anyone with pitchforks and torches back during 2008, I sure don't expect anything now from this lazy and increasingly misinformed and uneducated society.

History if full of rich people who thought they were safe right up until the moment they were being strung up or their heads cut off. Nothing has changed about human nature in the last few hundred years.

I have been watching comments on NYTimes and Fox News and what surprised was not a single person (out of couple of thousands) actually estimated their tax bill and compared.

There is one calculator out here (which might not be accurate because of changes): https://www.calcxml.com/calculators/trump-tax-reform-calcula...

I used it to arrive at following numbers. If this tax calculator is right then there is indeed ~$10K tax cut for everyone in middle class and above:

$750K->$236,950 to $212,060

350K->$81,595 to $72,060

250K->$47,701 to $38,900

150K->$17,778 to $9900

50K->$548 to 0

On the other hand this NYTimes analysis says that lower and middle class cuts are tiny but people with $1M or more just get huge cut: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/17/us/politics/s...

Also, according to above analysis poor people will be taxed more than before after 10 years!

So overall at this point I think computing impact remains very hazy given all kind of conflicting information. But one thing for sure, rich people are the major winner here given much higher cuts + no or less death tax. Warren Buffet had said that common strategy they used during Bush era was to give $400 one time check to everyone so they are happy while sneaking in millions of dollars of recurring tax cuts for the rich in form of capital gains.

I wish US had Swiss style public referendums where people can demand to vote on legislation and overthrow any legislation they wished.

The U.S Bureau of the Census has the annual real median personal income at $31,099 in 2016.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

The reality is that no-one really understand the consequences of the bill. It's a gigantic shit-pile of hastily written hacks crammed together at the last minute and rushed through without any opportunity for anyone to actually evaluate it.

You’re missing the big picture. Our country will have a larger deficit and the burden on a percent share basis is heavier on the middle class.

Those numbers you posted are probably inaccurate. The true numbers really depend on whether you itemize your deductions, and how much. This particular tax bill substantially raises taxes for people who itemize, in particular states with high local taxes like California.

I don’t know about Fox News but The NY Times had a good analysis of this: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/28/upshot/what-t...

Obviously many families and individuals will see their taxes go up.

The numbers are probably a little better than he posted, because of several last minute changes:

including a provision that will allow taxpayers to deduct up to $10,000 in state and local property taxes paid and allowing lower-income individuals to claim the medical expense deduction.

I assumed standard family (married filed jointly, 2 kids, standard deduction).

Yeah somehow I don't see itemized deductions as a "middle class" thing. Even less so with the standard deduction increase.

About 1/3 of households itemize deductions, including myself. I live in a two bedroom condo with two kids, I consider myself "middle class." Itemizing deductions is much more common in high tax ("Blue") states due to the state/local tax deduction. This tax "cut" is targeted to raise taxes on blue states by eliminating that.

The standard deduction increase is a bit of a trick, since they removed the personal deduction. So it's not a "doubling" of the standard deduction, but an increase of a few thousand. It is not enough to cover the removal of other deductions for many middle/upper-middle class families.

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