Chye-Ching Huang

Our analysis of the full Joint Committee on Taxation tables of the flawed GOP megabill: a $1T tax cut for the top 1% and a staggering $2.4T tax cut for the top 10%.

Tax cuts of around $500B for households in the bottom 60%--the very folks who also face the brunt of cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.

Eliminating multi-language services would make it harder for taxpayers to comply with their tax obligations, set honest taxpayers up to fail and needlessly put tax revenue at risk. The IRS should not move forward with this harmful idea that has no sound tax administration purpose.

We are excited to launch a project to remake federal tax administration. Effective tax administration is critical to the federal government, but has recently faced drastic challenges over the last six months.

DOGE Put Free Tax Filing Tool on Chopping Block After One Meeting With Lobbyists A key operative from DOGE initiated plans to potentially kill Direct File, the free tax filing tool developed by the IRS, after offering assurances it would be spared from cuts.

SCOOP: DOGE moved to kill Direct File, the IRS's popular free tax filing tool, days after meeting with private tax filing software lobbyists.
www.wired.com/story/doge-d...

This piece confirms grave risk to all taxpayers from DHS efforts to get its hands on legally protected IRS data, risking targeting of US citizens, mistaken arrests, and rampant violations of privacy rights and civil liberties

Correcting the Social Security Administration About The Big Budget Bill The misleading communication from SSA may add to the confusion many older adults already feel about the complex retirement insurance program.

TPC corrects the record on taxes on Social Security benefits.

Trump Admin claimed "nearly 90% of Social Security beneficiaries will no longer pay fed income taxes on their bens"

50.9% of filers w/SS bens paid the tax before
47.3% now

Only 3.6% no longer pay

taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/corre...

Conventional wisdom had been that no-one can litigate to block these unlawful regulatory giveaways, despite harm to the rule of law, deficits, & the tax system.

But Hemel & Kamin set out above, if you look hard enough, there are potential litigants.

At @taxlawcenter.org, we're looking hard.

In both icebergs, many of the asks will be for things that are either clearly unlawful, or at the very least aren't the best interpretation of the law.

E.g. see @danielhemel.bsky.social @davidkamin.bsky.social on cap gains indexation papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Beware of “deregulatory” efforts that add to deficits and tilt the tax system to the wealthy As the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”) seeks drastic changes to the federal government in the name of saving money, reporters and commentators have noted that many claimed savings are dub...

Some examples from implementation of the 2017 TCJA here:

taxlawcenter.org/blog/beware-...

(Much linking to Samantha Jacoby @centeronbudget.bsky.social who had her work cut out for her documenting giveaways that made a bad law worse.)

The other iceberg is all of the inevitable jockeying and lobbying over regs interpreting and implementing "OBBA". Private interests will pile in and ask for generous interpretations of the law that maximize their tax cuts, sometimes in ways that stretch or overstep what's lawful.

Beware of “deregulatory” efforts that add to deficits and tilt the tax system to the wealthy As the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”) seeks drastic changes to the federal government in the name of saving money, reporters and commentators have noted that many claimed savings are dub...

Industry has already been asking for piles of tax regulatory giveaways, more esoteric than the cap gains ask, but also worth $$$.

E.g. undoing regs preventing large partnerships playing games with basis. Undoing regs on "microcaptive insurance" tax games:

taxlawcenter.org/blog/beware-...

Conservatives are asking Trump for another big tax cut Fresh off passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” some anti-tax advocates hope to push the administration to change how taxable capital gains are calculated.

Via @jeffstein.bsky.social @washingtonpost.com anti-tax interests want the Trump IRS to give an unlawful tax cut to wealthy people by executive fiat.

Just the tip of one of two big icebergs of tax cuts for special interests coming for the tax system. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

House-passed, etc.:

Grim Polls for the GOP Budget Bill | Tax Notes Joseph J. Thorndike examines the results of several polls that report voter support of and opposition to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

The 2017 tax bill was bad for Republican politicians. The 2025 law could easily be worse.

www.taxnotes.com/featured-ana...

To cut taxes for wealthy filers and large businesses, it will take away health coverage and food assistance from struggling families while adding trillions to long-run deficits.

More to come from @taxlawcenter.org, including on changes to the bill released just minutes before the vote.

The Senate-passed bill weakens the tax system and makes it more regressive, complex, and gameable.

Many of its tax cuts are complicated and wasteful tax breaks that dole out favors to specific industries and activities with little or no good policy reason.

I.e. a bit more efficient redline. So it might flag sec. 70437 is new. But then you have to check its work. & it's not going to (reliably) tell you that the impact of this cap gains deferral is to make it easier for megafarms to buy out small. Or who asked for it. Or what it costs, or who benefits.

Responsible lawmakers should insist on enough time to understand what the provisions already in the bill do, what their impact is, and where they come from.

And the same for any coming changes.

There's very likely more not yet dug up given the ridiculous haste.

Given the new surprises in each round of text, Senators should insist on being able to closely study the final “wraparound” amendment.

Some surprises (among many):
Spaceport tax breaks
Senate SALT policies more generous than the House
$15B more in CHIPS tax breaks largely a windfall for projects underway
Making it easier for megafarms to buy out family farms

House members have been regretting voting for a bill they didn’t have time to understand. One said she “would have voted NO if I had known this was in there.” And she may not have been alone – an amendment to remove the provision (AI reg moratorium) passed 99-1 last night.

A megabill mystery: New solar and wind tax comes as a surprise to Republican senators "I don't know where it came from," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the chairman of the Budget Committee, told NBC News after he released the 940-page legislation.

Turns out the solar & wind tax was a mystery even to lawmakers who released it. The Budget Committee Chairman, who *released the bill text* said the provision is “a secret, I guess. I don't know where it came from.” www.nbcnews.com/politics/con... by @frankthorp.bsky.social @sahilkapur.bsky.social

We flagged some of these: bsky.app/profile/dash...

Thread:

Lawmakers are realizing “surprises,” “airdrops” &“mysteries” are buried in the bill.

Time to take a beat: seems more important to know what's in a ~$5T bill than meet a fake deadline! Things worth $10s/100s of billions & people’s livelihoods & health aren’t “minutiae.”

There will be at least one more round of changes before the bill text is final. What other goodies and windfalls that erode the tax base will be slipped in, and who will reap the rewards?

This is one of the ways that an opaque, rushed process can benefit special interests: each round of 100s of pages of bill text has come with under-the-radar giveaways that may escape serious scrutiny.

Then over the weekend, billions of dollars more in targeted giveaways were dropped into the bill, with new tax breaks for spaceports and other investments already underway. See e.g. @reportercioffi.bsky.social (paywall): www.bloomberglaw.com/product/blaw...

Senate Finance Committee Bill Picks New Winners for Tax Giveaways The Senate Finance Committee version of the reconciliation bill adds several new tax breaks that are targeted giveaways, often to specific industries, and with no sound policy or economic justificatio...

This is just one of many targeted tax giveaways the Senate Finance Committee initially added to the bill. Others include windfall retroactive tax cuts for businesses: taxlawcenter.org/blog/senate-....

But instead of cracking down on abusive planning, the Senate tax bill would make the tax break even more generous, at a cost of $17 billion in the first decade (and more over time).

As @taxlawcenter.org has highlighted: section 1202 does little or nothing to encourage investments in high-capacity start-up small businesses that wouldn’t have happened anyway, so it should be repealed or at least reformed. taxlawcenter.org/tealbook/pol...