Senate Republicans are down to the wire on their tax restaurant check — so much so that the legislation, which would massively overhaul the realm’s tax code, has large portions that are handwritten.
Mere hours on of the Senate’s tax vote, Republicans have yet to release an official copy of the tax restaurant check. The only legislative text that has been internally circulated by Senate pikestaff and tax lobbyists, and made public first by Bloomberg reporter Sahil Kapur, lists large swaths of policy changes in handwriting, filled between the assortments and in the margins of a previous copy.
The handwritten policy changes include differences to the language around the expansion of the child tax credit and how to tax pass-through companies, counterpart LLCs or partnerships, that are transitioning into corporations that are encumbered at a different rate. The handwritten edits also cross out an entire fraction of the bill giving a tax deduction for tuition payments toward some skilful religious instruction.
Kapur tweet
As this handwritten copy of the tax neb surfaced, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Ron Wyden (D-OR), the top Democrat on the tax-writing Investment capital Committee, took to the Senate floor to decry the Republicans’ rushed, unpublished, and last-minute process.
Durbin asked to submit the legislative text with handwritten second to the Senate record as “artwork.” Sen. John Tester (D-MT) also released a video highlighting the handwritten deal outs of the bill, sarcastically saying this was “your government at work.”
Tester tweet
Wyden seconded Durbin’s rebuke a demand, saying the Republicans’ last-minute partisan process on the tax bill was “outrageous,” and reckoned that the text should be in the Senate record so the “American people can get a head of the kind of flimflam that’s going on here.”
In all, the Senate’s tax plan — a $1.4 trillion tax cut — for all cuts the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent, nullifies Obamacare’s individual mandate, estimated to leave 13 million fewer insured throughout the next decade, and lowers tax rates for most Americans until 2026, overwhelmingly benefiting the country’s wealthiest.
The bill, which was pieced together overnight the day in the vanguard the vote, also alters the state and local tax deduction — completely repealing the takings tax deduction and capping the property tax deduction at $10,000 — a last-minute addition to win over with Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME). It also gives a 23 percent conclusion to pass-through businesses, which are companies organized as sole proprietorships, partnerships, LLCs, or S corporations that don’t pay the corporate revenues tax, a demand from Sens. Ron Johnson (WI) and Steve Daines (MT).
The final variety of the bill has not had a public hearing, was largely crafted behind closed doors, and was rescued just ahead of the final vote.