In the Black: June 2025
A Big Bummer Bill
Pending Tax Law Changes
I’ve been putting off writing this newsletter because I keep thinking we’ll know more about the upcoming changes soon, but alas… At tax time, I spoke with many of you about the coming changes, and I was HOPING that by the time I was working on Q2 tax estimates, I could also talk with folks about how the changes would affect everyone, but no.
You’ve perhaps heard about the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’. It’s technically the budget, which needs only a simple majority in the Senate to pass, rather than the 60 votes needed to pass other bills (for a good time, you can always learn about how the filibuster has effectively ground legislation to a halt in our closely divided government here). The sitting administration has this one shot to address their tax agenda.
Why are we here? In the first Trump term, they passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017, which made some pretty major changes to the tax code (like lowering the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%). Most of the provisions of this act sunset in 2026. Will the GOP extend the cuts? Let them lapse? Propose a different tax code? We’d all love to know.
Now, if you remember your Schoolhouse Rock, you know that a bill must start in the House of Representatives and then move to the Senate. This bill has now been passed to the Senate. So why am I not taking it all apart for you here? Because it’s a doozy, plus there is a high likelihood that it will get some pretty major changes in the Senate.
Without even going into what’s in the bill, we can talk about the main issue: even with deep and unpopular cuts to Medicaid and Obamacare which are projected to cause more than 13.7 MILLION people to become uninsured (from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget office), these tax cuts for wealthy Americans and corporations will add more than $3 TRILLION to the national debt in the next 10 years. I guess all that talk about fiscal responsibility was hot air. Taking on massive debt with no way to pay for it, to help your friends, is no way to run a business, much less a country.
Just out here balancing budgets.
Liz