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Massive Deficit Accumulating

The Trump Administration is on the path to rack up a trillion dollar deficit for fiscal year 2018-2019, due to a combination of declining total tax revenues and administrative overspending.

The federal government collected a record $1,521,589,000,000 in individual income taxes through the first eleven months of fiscal 2018 while corporation income tax collections and total federal tax collections were in decline.

Trump needs to work on cutting spending in order to reduce the massive deficit he has accumulated this past year. It wasn’t good when Obama did it and it’s not good that Trump is doing it.

Republicans Might Actually Try to Make Tax Cuts and Changes Permanent

House Republicans have put forth a bill that would make some of the tax cuts and changes permanent instead of expiring after a few years. This includes:

  • The reduction in the individual tax rates
  • The increased new standard deduction, which went to $12000/individual and $24000 married couples
  • Special deduction for pass-through business owners

It’s worth noting that the corporate tax reduction was already permanent with last year’s law. Other additional financial parts of this new legislation include:

  • Allowing employers to join together to offer 401Ks in order to lower costs
  • Allow 401K users who have an annuity to transfer it tax-free to an IRA
  • Remove the age ceiling (70½) requiring distributions from IRAs and 401Ks, and continue to contribute up to $6,500/year in an IRA
  • Create a new universal savings account with a maximum of $2,500/year
    after tax funds that can used for non-retirement purposes
  • Allow parents to remove up to $7,500 from a retirement plan without penalty under certain child-related conditions.
  • Allow 529 college savings accounts to fund various other educational expenses, including apprenticeship programs, home schooling, or child student loan payments.

As if on cue, Democrats rebuke the legislation as being overly beneficial to the wealthy — as if the economic upswing which has helped everyone across-the-board, has not happened. They also chide the bill for adding to the federal deficit, even though Democrats were virtually silent when Obama had very sizeable deficits throughout most his administration.  However, putting forth the legislation at this time indicates that Republicans are interested in talking about the strong economy ahead of the midterms elections — which is the smartest thing they can do right now. The GOP missed the chance to make the Bush Tax cuts permanent. They would do well not to make the same mistake twice.