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Groton Daily Independent
Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 165 ~ 40 of 44
size, to $24,000 for a married couple. Some families will probably stop taking deductions for things like mortgage interest as a result, making their tax returns easier to le. But people who give heavily to char- ity, for example, will still have to run through their receipts to see if they’re better off with the standard deduction or itemization.
Many business owners and upper-income taxpayers are faced with a host of new complexities: Should high-paid employees try to reclassify their salaries as business income, which will now be subject to a lower tax rate? If so, what will they do in eight years, when the lower rate on business income is set to expire? Are they losing their deduction for state and local taxes, which can be worth tens of thousands of dollars for wealthier taxpayers? Many will, but it may not matter if they paid the alternative minimum tax in previous years, which overrode those deductions.
These types of questions will keep accountants busy for months, if not longer.
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TRUMP on the tax plan: “So there’s a great spirit for it, people want to see it.” — Fox Business interview
in October.
THE FACTS: Polling doesn’t nd that spirit.
In an NBC-Wall Street Journal poll this week, 41 percent said the tax plan is a bad idea, 24 percent said
it was good. That’s a deterioration in support over two months.
A Quinnipiac University poll this month found that registered voters, convinced that the bene ts will ow
mainly to corporations and the wealthy, oppose the plan 55 percent to 26 percent.
In a Gallup poll in September, just 2 percent of respondents named taxes as the country’s most impor- tant problem. Dissatisfaction with government, race relations and immigration were among the issues at
the forefront.
A survey this month by CBS News found that 53 percent Americans say they pay about the right amount
in taxes, while 40 percent say they pay more than their fair share. That same survey found 52 percent said corporations pay less than their fair share. The president’s plan will cut the corporate tax rate to from 35 percent to 21 percent.
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Associated Press writers Josh Boak and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed to this report. ___
Find AP Fact Checks at https://apnews.com/tag/APFactCheck
AP FACT CHECK: Trump says ‘Obamacare’ is repealed. It isn’t. By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has prematurely declared “Obamacare” dead and dis- played a misunderstanding of where the money comes from to make the health law work.
A look at his remarks Wednesday about the tax plan he will soon sign into law and its effect on President Barack Obama’s health insurance overhaul:
TRUMP: “Obamacare has been repealed in this bill.”
THE FACTS: It hasn’t. The tax plan ends nes for people who don’t carry health insurance. That’s a major change but far from the dismantling of the law.
Other marquee components of Obama’s law remain, such as the Medicaid expansion serving low-income adults, protections that shield people with pre-existing medical conditions from being denied coverage or charged higher premiums, income-based subsidies for consumers buying individual health insurance policies, the requirement that insurers cover “essential” health bene ts, and the mandate that larger em- ployers provide coverage to their workers or face nes.
Also, the tax bill doesn’t repeal nes for uninsured individuals until the start of 2019, meaning the indi- vidual mandate is still in force for next year unless the administration acts to waive the penalties.
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TRUMP: “When you add it all up together, and then you add two things — the individual mandate is be-