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Experts complain that GOP tax-bill is riddled with bugs, loopholes and vague, undefined language.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/06/tax-plan-glitches-mistakes-republicans-208049Some of the provisions could be easily gamed, tax lawyers say. Their plans to cut taxes on “pass-through” businesses in particular could open broad avenues for tax avoidance.
Others would have unintended results, like a last-minute decision by the Senate to keep the alternative minimum tax, which was designed to make sure wealthy people and corporations don't escape taxes altogether. For many businesses, that would nullify the value of a hugely popular break for research and development expenses.
Some provisions are so vaguely written they leave experts scratching their heads, like a proposal to begin taxing the investment earnings of rich private universities’ endowments. The legislation H.R. 1 (115) doesn’t explain what’s considered an endowment, and some colleges have more than 1,000 accounts.
In many cases, Republicans are giving taxpayers little time to adjust to sometimes major changes in policy. An entirely new international tax regime, one experts are still trying to parse, would go into effect Jan. 1, only days after lawmakers hope to push the plan through Congress.
“The more you read, the more you go, ‘Holy crap, what’s this?'” said Greg Jenner, a former top tax official in George W. Bush’s Treasury Department. “We will be dealing with unintended consequences for months to come because the bill is moving too fast.”
...
The House bill also includes a whole new way of taxing multinational corporations — aside from the one-time tax — that lawmakers have hardly debated, and which experts are still trying to understand.
“It’s crazy,” said one Republican lobbyist. “I don’t think anyone could explain it, let alone comply with it” by Jan. 1.
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The ACA was in the works for 6 months and still needed fixing afterwards. Guess how much time Congress will spend fixing Trump's tax-bill.
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