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
Mar 16, 2026 8:44 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
Seattle’s Minimum Wage Experiment is Already Failing
Last year when Seattle announced it was raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour, I made four predictions about how the policy would affect the city over the next three years. One of the predictions was that, Unemployment will increase for low-wage workers— It’s true that economists disagree about the effects of the minimum wage on employment and the living standards of minimum wage earners. But almost all of the disagreement is about relatively small increases—less than 20 percent....
Politics and Prophetic Distance: Russell Moore on the Power of a Gospel Community
Last week, I was pleased to attend the ERLC’s 2015 National Conference on Gospel and Politics, of whichthe Acton Institute was a proud co-sponsor. The speaker line-up was strikingly rich and diverse, ranging from pastors to writers to politicos to professors, but among them all, Russell Moore’s morning address was the clear stand-out. Moore beganby asking, “How do we as Christians engage in issues that sometimes are political without ing co-opted by politics and losing the gospel and the mission...
Audio: Samuel Gregg on Religious and Economic Liberty
Acton’s Director of Research Samuel Gregg made an appearance over the weekend on the Real Clear Radio Hour with Bill Frezza to discuss the relationship between economic and religious liberty, and the role that a Christian worldview plays in building thetype of world that prefigures the Christian idea of the next life. The interview runs for 25 minutes, and you can listen to it via the audio player below. ...
Samuel Gregg on the ‘Seamless’ Ethic of Life
Cardinal Joseph Bernardin (1928-1996)At The Catholic World Report, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg examines the use of the expression “a consistent ethic of life” — a phrase which has been used by Roman Catholic bishops as far back as a 1971 speech delivered by then-Archbishop Humberto Medeiros of Boston. More recently, Chicago Archbishop Blaise Cupich used the phrase in a Chicago Tribune article about the scandal of Planned Parenthood selling body-parts from aborted children. Elaborating, Cupich said “we should be...
Amazon and the ‘All Jobs Delusion’
In the movie Annie Hall, Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) tells an old joke about two elderly women having dinner at a Catskill mountain resort. One of them says, “Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.” The other one says, “Yeah, I know; and such small portions.” Alvy says that’s essentially how he feels about life: it’s full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it’s all over much too quickly. Many people seem to have a...
Why Do Intellectuals Hate Capitalism?
In an interview with Reason TV,Whole Foods co-founderJohn Mackey answers a rangeof questions about why so many intellectuals areopposed to the freemarket, whetherthroughouthistory and to this today. “Is it a misunderstanding of what business does?” asks Nick Gillespie. “Is it envy? Is it a lack of capacity to understand that what entrepreneurs do or what innovators do?” Here’s a sample: Intellectuals have always merce. That is something that tradesmen did; people that were in a lower class. And so you...
The Inherent Hypocrisy of Fossil-Fuel Divestment
Fr. Michael Crosby You can’t really take fossil fuel divestment seriously unless you ignore a lot of inconvenient truths. These would include such things as Al Gore’s carbon footprint or the fuel bill for the dozens of private jets flown to any UN climate summit. On a more mundane level, we might point to benefits of abundant and affordable resources of coal, natural gas and crude oil that power modern industrialized economies and will continue to dominate as future energy...
DOJ: Banning the Homeless from Sleeping Outside Violates the Eighth Amendment’s ‘Cruel and Unusual Punishments’ Clause
While being homeless is not a crime, cities across America are increasingly making activities associated with a lack of shelter against the law. A survey of 187 cities found that 34 percent impose city-wide bans on camping in public and 18 percent impose city-wide bans on sleeping in public. In 2009, a group of homeless plaintiffs challenged the city of Boise, Idaho over its ordinance banning sleeping and camping in public places. This week the Department of Justice issued a...
5 Facts About Islamic State’s Theology of Rape
A year ago this month, Islamic State (also known as IS, ISIS, or ISIL) began a systematic program of capturing women and girls for the purposes of rape, forced marriage, and sexual slavery. Yesterday, the New York Times brought renewed attention to the war crimes in an article examining how IS enshrines a theology of rape. Here are five facts you should know about how IS views and justifies the practice of sexual slavery: 1.IS considers rape of sex slaves...
Matt Ridley vs. Environmentalist Cassandras
Highly mended reading es from Matt Ridley in the Wall Street Journal. His essay, “The Green Scare Problem,” rebuts environmentalist Cassandras from Rachel Carson to the present day, exposing the rampant hyperbole ecological warriors employ to sell their global warming and anti-genetically modified organism policies to an unsuspecting public. Ridley goes even further to show how these policies harm the world’s poorest. Ridley begins by quoting President Obama, who reduces the opposition of his climate-change agenda as nothing more than...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved