Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Explainer: What you should know about President Trump’s tax reform plan
Explainer: What you should know about President Trump’s tax reform plan
Apr 14, 2026 8:14 PM

Yesterday the Trump administration released its tax-reform plan, which the White House is calling the “biggest individual and business tax cut in American history.” Here is what you should know about the plan:

What are the goals of the tax reform plan:

The stated goals are to:

• Grow the economy and create millions of jobs

• Simplify our burdensome tax code

• Provide tax relief to American families—especially e families

• Lower the business tax rate from one of the highest in the world to one of the lowest

What are the objective for individual taxpayer reform?

The plan promises:

• Tax relief for American families, especially e families:

• Reducing the 7 tax brackets to 3 tax brackets of 10%, 25% and 35%

• Doubling the standard deduction

• Providing tax relief for families with child and dependent care expenses

• Eliminate targeted tax breaks that mainly benefit the wealthiest taxpayers

• Protect the home ownership and charitable gift tax deductions

• Repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax

• Repeal the death tax

• Repeal the 3.8% Obamacare tax that hits small businesses and investment e

How does the plan affect individual taxpayers?

The effect on individual taxpayers would vary widely, depending on numerous factors.

For example, the plan promises to reduce the tax brackets to 10 percent, 25 percent and 35 percent, but doesn’t say who would fall into those categories. When asked about it at the roll-out briefing, Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn called such information a “micro-detail.”

The standard deduction would double from $6,300 to $12,600 for single individuals and from $12,600 to $24,000 for married couples. The effect of this increase is unclear since it will be offset by a reduction in other tax deductions (deductions for home ownership, charitable giving, and retirement savings would remain while all other tax benefits would be eliminated). For example, if you live in a city or state with a high local or state tax you’d no longer be able to deduct those taxes from your federal tax bill. But a married couple earning $24,000 would benefit the most since they would no longer pay not tax at all.

While some people will benefit from the new standard deduction, other middle class taxpayers will end up paying more. As Forbes contributor Tony Nitti explains:

[T]he plan would increase the standard deduction from $12,600 to $24,000 ($12,000 if single), and eliminate personal exemptions.

So if you’re scoring at home, a family of five that currently claims the standard deduction will actuallylosedeductions under the Trump plan. Under current law, they would be entitled to a $12,600 standard deduction and $20,250 of personal exemptions, for a total tax benefit of $32,850. Under this latest proposal, that would be replaced with a $24,000 standard deduction and no personal exemptions. That’s going to be a tough sell.

Families are promised “tax relief to help them with child and dependent care expenses.” But no details have been released on that aspect of the proposal.

The plan would also eliminate the alternative minimum tax (AMT), which affects e individuals and couples, and the estate tax, which affects only about 5,000 tax returns but generates $19.7 billion in taxes. Additionally, the plan would also repeal the 3.8 percent Obamacare tax on dividends and capital gains.

What are the objective for business tax reform?

The reform plan for businesses contains four elements:

• 15 percent business tax rate

• Territorial tax system to level the playing field for panies

• One-time tax on trillions of dollars held overseas

• Eliminate tax breaks for special interests

How does the plan affect individual businesses?

The plan would reduce the federal tax on all business e from 35 percent to 15 percent. This would affect not only corporations (C corporations) but also small businesses that are structured as partnerships or S Corporations.

The plan also includes a one-time tax on overseas profits. This is estimated to bring in an additional one-time total of $250 billion, which the administration wants to use for its infrastructure spending.

The other items are still too vague to know how they would affect businesses.

Why are so few details listed in the plan?

The “plan” is more of an outline with the details to be filled in at a later date. As the plan notes in the “process” section:

Throughout the month of May, the Trump Administration will hold listening sessions with stakeholders to receive their input and will continue working with the House and Senate to develop the details of a plan that provides massive tax relief, creates jobs, and makes America petitive—and can pass both chambers.”

How would this plan affect the deficit?

Because this plan includes only tax cuts and no offsets in spending, the effect would be an estimated increase in the deficit of between $2-7 trillion over the next decade.

How does this plan differ from the proposal outlined by President Trump during the campaign?

The new plan includes five items that Trump promised on the campaign trail: reducing the tax brackets, increasing the standard deduction, reducing business tax to 15 percent, and eliminating the AMT and estate tax.

However, Trump’s campaign plan promised to be “revenue neutral” (i.e., would not increase the deficit), a claim which few economists outside of the White House believes is possible.

What are the chances that this plan is fully implemented?

Near zero. Many individual taxpayers will balk at the removal of their itemized deductions, and Republicans in Congress will not want to support a plan that leads to such substantial increases in the deficit.

While Congress will likely pass some elements, there isn’t much chance President Trump will be able to get all of the items on his tax reform wish list.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Entrepreneurship in theological perspective: Creative and innovative
What distinguishes something that is truly creative from something that is simply innovative? And how do we value and prioritize one or the other? In a recent study, “Creativity, Innovation, and the Historicity of Entrepreneurship,” Victor Claar and I attempt to disambiguate what we call “creative entrepreneurship” from “innovative entrepreneurship.” We describe creative entrepreneurship (or creativity more generally) as “what human beings do in connection with the fundamental givenness of things.” There are possibilities inherent in the created order on...
The Acton Institute holds top-ranked conference among free-market think tanks: Forbes
As we noted on this blog last month, an independent report has ranked the Acton Institute among the world’s elite think tanks. An analyst at Forbes magazine has narrowed the focus and found that our annual Acton University rated as the highest-rated conference put on by “organizations that favor the free economy.” The University of Pennsylvania released its “2020 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report” on January 28. “[D]espite certain weaknesses,” this publication – produced by James G. McGann,...
How Australia regulated the news out of Facebook
Imagine a world where you log into your social media account and find pictures of babies, discussion of ideas, notifications munity groups with which you are involved, updates from family and friends, and cat memes. Curiously absent is any news. This is the world Australian Facebook users have been living in since yesterday, the product of the unintended consequence of government intervention. Writing for the Financial Times, Richard Waters, Hannah Murphy, and Alex Baker give a good overview of these...
China’s BBC ban is a warning for those who could crack down on ‘fake news’
Shortly after the Capitol riot, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stated, “We’re going to have to figure out how we rein in our media environment so that you can’t just spew disinformation and misinformation.” This week, China put her words into action. It banished the BBC from Chinese airwaves, allegedly because of the global news service’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and Uighur Muslims’ persecution amounted to “disinformation.” The BBC reported on its own silencing: China’s State Film, TV and Radio Administration...
Rush Limbaugh, RIP: 6 quotations on socialism, the Founding Fathers, and life
The most popular conservative personality of modern times, Rush Limbaugh, passed away this morning at the age of 70 plications due to lung cancer. While neither an intellectual nor a writer – he did not earn a college degree – his quick wit and pithy turn of municated the message of a free and virtuous society to their largest consistent audience. His widow, Kathryn, announced Limbaugh’s death on his syndicated talk radio show this afternoon. Rush Hudson Limbaugh III was...
We should not fear automation
The Cato Institute recently released a fascinating study explaining why fears about job losses via automation may be exaggerated. Many people today fear that our technological innovations, particularly automation, will result in permanent job losses. The fear especially applies to e jobs, which usually act as an entrance into the workforce for young people or others. This data, including new figures from the twentieth century, shows that this may be an historically misplaced fear. According to the study, in the...
‘Mental torture’? Jimmy Lai denied bail for second time
Early Tuesday morning local time, guards hurried pro-democracy and human rights advocate Jimmy Lai out of his prison transport – handcuffed, arms chained around his waist like a member of a chain gang – and inside the courthouse. Lai’s only apparent consolation came from a copy of Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain, which his wife and child had given him days earlier. The bestselling spiritual classic instructs: The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller...
The gift of ‘regular old living’: Pixar’s ‘Soul’ on work and vocation
Surrounded by abounding prosperity, we are constantly told to “follow our passions,” to “look deep inside ourselves,” to “find our calling,” to “do what we love and love what we do.” And why shouldn’t we? Freedom is expanding. Opportunity is everywhere. Having mostly escaped the material deprivation of human history, our attentions have quite happily turned toward the meaning of our work, and for those resistant to peting allure of materialism, it is a e shift, to be sure. Yet...
New series on Orthodox Christian social thought
At Every Thought Captive, a blog of Ancient Faith Ministries, I’ve been writing a series on Orthodox Christianity and modern Christian social thought. In my first essay, I explore the question, “What is modern Christian social thought?” The plight of the working poor in the nineteenth century came to be called the “Social Question,” and by the end of that century Christian pastors and intellectuals refused to remain silent or continue to pine away for a bygone social order that...
‘Religion & Liberty’ Winter 2021 issue released
The latest edition of the Acton Institute’s flagship journal, Religion & Liberty, has been released. The Winter 2021 issue focuses on the menace of political violence. Politics merce and goodwill unite. That truth has been driven home as politically inspired riots have swept the nation. In our cover story, Ismael Hernandez observes that the underlying ideology driving much of our division “is not drawn from the perspective of black Americans as they collectively reflected on the American experience; this view...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved