How Trump and Congress may pay for TCJA extension

Financial advisors and their clients know that the expiring parts of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will likely remain in place, but they could be waiting until the end of the year on the details.

Regardless of their views of eight key policy questions outlined in the slideshow below and on President Donald Trump and his Republican party’s control of Congress and the White House, planners and other tax and wealth management professionals face the need to get ready for new potential rules. That’s why it’s important to look past the daily headlines emanating from Capitol Hill to the big themes.

Currently, the House and the Senate are tying each other up in the complicated process of agreeing to a budget resolution setting a target for revenue and spending that includes tax legislation and other priorities for this session of Congress, according to experts like Jonathan Traub, a managing principal and the leader of the Tax Policy Group at consulting and professional services firm Deloitte Tax. They must reach an understanding on their budget blueprint before moving on to legislation meeting those price figures. 

President Trump has expressed more support for the House’s plan to pass “one big, beautiful bill” covering taxes and immigration, but the Senate is lining up behind two pieces of legislation — which Trump has described as an acceptable option as well.

“I understand his perspective, which is, ‘I will weigh in on the policy, but that’s their ballfield. I’m not going to play on their turf,'” Traub said, noting the delays among Republicans seeking to find common ground on the budget resolution. “The longer that goes on, in my mind it ends up backing you into a two-bill strategy. At some point, if they’re working on parallel tracks that never meet, the president’s going to be frustrated by the lack of action.”

The tax policy dilemma that is converging on Trump and his party revolves around thorny math and politics that don’t pose many easy answers. The legislation will expand the deficit by several trillions of dollars and add to the country’s debt — even if its supporters wish to think that tariffs or corresponding economic gains will wipe away the cost completely. Simultaneously, other ideas such as cutting out tens of billions of dollars worth of tax enforcement programs signed into law by Trump’s predecessor, President Joe Biden, is “actually a revenue-loser as opposed to a revenue-raiser,” said Mary Burke Baker, a government affairs counselor and the leader of the Tax Policy practice of law firm K&L Gates.

As a former “keeper of the offset list” with the Senate Finance Committee, Burke Baker pointed out that this process is a very difficult one for any party on a major bill. 

“Some offset is going to affect somebody, and that makes it extremely challenging to come up with acceptable offsets that have any money attached to them that they can use to help pay for this bill,” she said.

It’s no wonder that some earlier forecasts before President Trump took office that the tax legislation would pass by May are now looking flimsy for a Congress with a very slim Republican majority in the House. By congressional standards, completing the tax legislation by Memorial Day would represent a very speedy process — almost unthinkably so.

“It will really involve all Republican lawmakers just following neatly in line with President Trump,” said Joe Hughes, a senior analyst for the nonprofit, nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, which provides “data-driven recommendations to shape equitable and sustainable tax systems.” As much as they do support Trump, many of the Republican ranks aim to reduce the deficit spending in the tax bill, Hughes noted. 

“No matter how you slice it up, it will be a very costly bill and have enormous impact on the federal deficit and debt,” he added. 

Even as some in Congress show that they’re willing to pretend that extending the Trump tax law somehow costs zero dollars, that budget gimmick could sign them up for a rendezvous with so-called bond vigilantes who have economy-tanking high interest rates in their holsters. Altering the baseline of the federal budget with “funny math” by counting current tax laws as costing nothing “would make a lot of people mad,” said Ben Henry-Moreland, a former planner who’s a senior financial planning nerd with the Kitces.com blog.

“It all depends on what sort of will and political pressure there is to pass these tax cuts,” he said. “If there’s a will to do that, they’re going to find a way.”

Scroll down the slideshow below for eight key tax policy issues for financial advisors and tax professionals to consider in the extension of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. To read the other part of Financial Planning’s tax-season feature on the math and politics shaping clients’ plans for next year, see “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expiration: A guide for financial advisors.” And click on the “tax” tag to see all of FP’s coverage of tax-related topics for advisors.