The stimulus bill includes a tax break for the 1%

[turbinetree]

Opinion by Ed McCaffery

Updated 2:45 PM ET, Sat March 28, 2020

We face a frightening pandemic. More than 100,000 American have been infected with Covid-19, while tens of millions more continue to shelter at home. Meanwhile, the markets are crashing.

And yet the more things change, the more they stay the same.

While health care workers and local governments frantically race against the clock to keep up with the escalating medical caseloads while trying to keep themselves and their families safe, Congress was still able to find the time to give money away to rich people.

Thanks to a stunning new report from the New York Times, which has been relentless on the tax beat during the Trump administration, we've learned that a provision has been included in the 880-page coronavirus stimulus bill to help the very wealthy in a way that is breathtaking in its scope and detail.

It is worth taking a minute -- many of us have more of those now in our quarantined states -- to explain.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/28/opinions/stimulus-bill-tax-break-for-1-mccaffery/index.html

This is why I have been harping that they could have given everyone that paid taxes in 2018, 1 million dollars if they made less than a 1 million dollars to pay off mortgages, renter payments, student debut etc....... instead of the BS we are getting from our financial institutions instead of giving tax breaks to those that depreciate a fucking building as loss............................................................JFC

[SheltieLover]

1. More of the same

That was my 1st thought about "stimulus"...

Maybe a crumb for most who are retired, disabled, low to middle wage earners, but most going to whores who are perpetuating misery.

Absolutely sickening!

Not to devalue our Dems in Congress fighting tooth & nail for us.

Nothing is ever enough to satiate those sickening repuke domestic terrorists.

[stopbush]

2. A million dollars? Seriously?

Have you done the math on that one? You’re talking $150,000,000,000,000.

[turbinetree]

8. Maybe I had a bad math teacher

$1,000,000.00 x 150,000,000 million people = 150,000,000.00 million dollars

[ProfessorGAC]

12. Well, That's Right

But it's $150 trillion. That's more than 6x than the entire national debt.
Now, that's some real money.

[stopbush]

13. Yes. $150-trillion.

That’s the number you're talking about.

[turbinetree]

14. well I had a bad math teacher had to many zero's ...............Thanks

[TheFarseer]

3. So they just get to take the depreciation all in the first year?

Or they get more depreciation overall? I’ve read about this in a couple places and I’m still not sure I get it. I’m also confused why you would get to depreciate land.

[Hoyt]

4. Accelerated depreciation has been used for decades -- through Republican and Democratic Admins

-- to juice the economy. That's essentially what this is. When the property is sold, they'll pay taxes on whatever they wrote off previously.

So elect Democrats in November, increase tax rates and screw them. I'm OK with that.

[customerserviceguy]

7. Yes, but

When you depreciate real estate, you get deductions against ordinary income. When you recapture that depreciation at the time of a sale, the amount that could be figured had only straight line depreciation is recaptured at capital gains tax rates, which right now top out at 20%.

The basic principle of tax deferral is for me to get a dollar a year for ten years, then after ten years (when I sell the asset) I pay back ten dollars. The advantage is that I've had the use of all those dollars for that decade. But this is getting a dollar a year for ten years, then paying back two dollars.

The limit was put in place to make sure the rich paid more in taxes, removing the limit undoes that.

[Hoyt]

9. That's why I said elect Dems and increase tax rates.

Been decades since I studied taxes and never really worked with them, but seems recaptured depreciation is taxed as ordinary income.

No question that rich get breaks, but the breaks are not as big as people often make it sound. The fact is, the top 20% pay more than 20% of income tax. It should be more, especially after trump’s ill advised tax cuts, for sure.

I do think it’s an absolute crime we don’t have a tougher estate tax system.

[customerserviceguy]

10. I haven't been

a tax accountant since the 1980's, but there was definitely some form of benefit to recapturing straight line depreciation at that time. I admit, I haven't kept up on the nuances of law changes since that time, especially on things that don't personally matter to me.

However, we agree completely on the solution to the problem!

[pat_k]

5. When the most fortunate should be investing via wealth tax.

This is appalling.

The top 10% owns 70% of the assets in this country. We should be demanding that they invest in the health of the nation and our economy in the form of a wealth tax to recoup at least some portion of the massive deficit spending required to weather this crisis. Because they rely on the health of the economy to thrive, it would probably be the best investment they ever made.

Giving tax break to those that owe this country the most is obscene.

So much for "pulling together" with each of us "doing our part." I guess we will never learn, and just keep forcing the bottom 10% to carry the burden of all the "sacrifice.


Absolutely obscene and immoral.

[Turin_C3PO]

6. Yup.

It’s like during the Middle Ages, where the peasantry was taxed while the nobility paid nothing. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

[Demovictory9]

15. kick