Then the last sentence became total speculation without a piece of evidence to back it up.

wealthy gets their cuts.

I've heard it from a number of those in the middle already, they will loose deductions or it just won't make sense to do deductions and in the end they'll be worse off. Especially with home ownership.

They're going to grab it from somewhere.

the people who definitely are going to take the biggest hit are the middle class who have been itemizing their deductions.

If you have been routinely taking the standard deduction, you will likely see a tax cut with the increase in it. Especially in the case of single middle class people taking said deduction.

I am against it because it does not increase the top rate to 50 percent.

First of all under current law if you are married and buy a house for $ 100,000 and sell it 25 years later for $ 550,000 you pay zero capital gains tax now under current law. That was part of the Bush tax cuts and it was made permanent.

Next, the author talks about buying a house and trading up a couple of times. Long ago the law was that if you sold a house, you had to put the money back into another house or you'd have to pay capital gains tax on your gains. Again, this was removed by the same Bush tax cut. You don't pay tax on gains less than $ 500,000 (married) whether you put the money into a new home or not. It sounds like the author still thinks the Clinton and earlier laws are in force.

As far as the last sentence is concerned, you are right. The two items are not related and I haven't heard of any plans to link them. It could happen I guess. Congress can pretty much do whatever they can get enough votes to do.

PS - I think the $ 5.5 million inheritance limit is about right. Give Obama credit for this one. The Bush tax cuts called for the elimination of the estate tax gradually. In one of the December budget deals, Obama and the congress compromised at a permanent rate of $ 5.5 million (goes up with inflation) which I think is reasonable. Before Bush the limit was $ 600,000 forever, and that was too low. That hit lots of middle class families that owned a house in a city.

had a lot of taxes paid on it already (property taxes), upkeep put into it, and a whole lot of money in interest paid through the years. In my thinking, it is a zero-sum game for most of us, even if we sell it at a "profit", there is no way we would recover what we have paid out for it over the years.

As far as inheritance tax, that is the least of the majority of people also. Most have lost big in the stock market since 2000 in their 401 accounts. (Great Idea there to push that money upward wasn't it?)

Savings accounts pay nothing anymore, 401k ends up losing a lot, CDs pay nothing in interest. Where are these big estates to pass down anyway? Give you one fat guess.

the somewhat upper middle class will be too.

They're pushing us all down to the bottom so they can be uber wealthy.

They know it won't be like ACA with sick children, in fact they'll rely on class friction to divide us.

That move on raising taxes on the poorest from 10-12% is just plain nasty. I'm glad to see some middle class people reacting negatively about that, it's terrible.

If you've lost big in the stock market since 2000 and haven't made money in your 401k, you need to take a careful look at where your money is.

On edit, the best thing that's ever happened to the stock market was President Obama. I benefited greatly from his careful stewardship of the economy.

who knows the market.

It's been going up, so those who are wallowing made the wrong moves pretty much.

In fact it's the smart ones who bought and held through bad times that will be punished by this tax reform.