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
Feb 26, 2026 8:00 AM

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
Acton Commentary: Spiritual Competition and the Zero-Sum Game
In this week’s Acton Commentary, “Spiritual Competition and the Zero-Sum Game,” I examine a plaint against the market economy: that it engenders what Walter Rauschenbusch called “the law of tooth and nail,” petitive ethos that ends only when the opponent is defeated. In the piece, I trace some of the vociferousness of such claims to the idea of economic reality as a fixed or static pie: The moral cogency of the argument petition is enhanced in a framework where the...
ResearchLinks – 08.17.12
Article: “Catholicism, Human Rights and the Public Sphere” Christopher McCrudden, International Journal of Public Theology This article suggests that the scope and meaning of human rights, and its relationship to religion, is anything but settled, and that this gives an opportunity to those who support a role for religion in public life to intervene. Such intervention should address four main issues. First, it should ensure that judges engage in attempting to understand religious issues from a cognitively internal viewpoint. Secondly,...
Germany’s Lutheran Economics
While the economy of America is influenced by old British economists like Smith and Keynes, Germans are still being influenced by an even older, homegrown economist: Martin Luther. Even today Germany, though religiously diverse and politically secular, defines itself and its mission through the writings and actions of the 16th century reformer, who left a succinct definition of Lutheran society in his treatise “The Freedom of a Christian,” which he summarized in two sentences: “A Christian is a perfectly free...
Samuel Gregg: Why Religious Liberty (and Thomas Becket) Really Matters
Acton’s Director of Research, Samuel Gregg, has authored a review of the book, “Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel” by John Guy. In it, Gregg notes the continuing need for vigilance regarding religious liberty: And yet as Islam’s present traumas should remind us, a religion’s capacity to make distinctions between the spiritual and temporal realms makes a difference to the more general growth of freedom. As Guy points out, Henry VIII’s looting and destruction of the sanctuary of St Thomas Becket...
Gregg: A Book That Changed Reality
Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg is featured in The American Spectator today with an article titled, “The Book That Changed Reality.” The piece lauds Catholic philosopher, journalist and theologian Michael Novak’s groundbreaking 1982 book, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism. Called his magnum opus, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism synthesized a moral defense of capitalism with existing cultural and political arguments. Gregg notes this ments on the book’s timely publication and lasting influence: From a 2012 vantage point, it’s easy to...
The FRC Shooting and the Vocation of a Hero
The key-card was required to get into the building and to operate the elevator, a security precaution added years earlier when protestors chained themselves together in the lobby. But when I forgot my key—and I was always forgetting my key—he plained. He never uttered a sarcastic remark or had a passive-aggressive sigh to remind me of my absent-mindedness. He’d just leave the guard-desk and quietly help me out. I suspect Leo Johnson exhibited the same stoic friendliness today, when a...
The Russian Punk Band and Religious Hate Crime
The all-girl Russian punk band, which in February pulled its juvenile, blasphemous stunt on the ambon of one of Russian Orthodoxy’s holiest places of worship, has generated an unending stream of twaddle from so mentators who betray a deep, willfully ignorant grasp of Christianity and a perfectly secular mindset. Commentator Dmitry Babich on the Voice of Russia observed that “the three female members of the group, who called the Patriarch ‘a bitch’ and ‘the God’s excrement’ in the holiest of...
What is a social entrepreneur and why do they matter?
There is a lot of talk today about “social entrepreneurs.” What is a social entrepreneur, and how does that differ from a business entrepreneur? Why do social entrepeneurs matter? According to the Ashoko website: Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems. They are ambitious and persistent, tackling major social issues and offering new ideas for wide-scale change. Rather than leaving societal needs to the government or business sectors, social entrepreneurs find what is not...
The Vocation of the Politician
This morning the online publication Ethika Politika, the journal of the Center for Morality in Public Life, published my response to a previous article by Thomas Storck on natural law and political engagement. In his article, Storck contents that though the natural law exists as a rationally accessible, universal standard of justice, due to the disordered passions of our fallen condition political engagement on the basis of natural law is all but fruitless. Instead, he mends a renewed emphasis on...
The Complexities of Paul Ryan
Some proponents of limited government understandably yearn to see Mitt Romney’s recently announced running mate, Paul Ryan, as something like the pure intellectual descendent of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Some on the left, meanwhile, will be tempted to portray him as a heartless monster who only wants to enrich the 1 percent. Paul Ryan the politician is plex than either portrait. Far from throwing granny under the bus, his efforts at budget reform are an essential step in saving...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved