Is the TCJA losing its political sway? Ads touting the benefits of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act stopped airing in the days before last night’s special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th district. Instead, ads focused on cultural issues. The race between Republican Rick Saccone and Democrat Conor Lamb remains too close to call for now, but another question remains: Will the TCJA remain the GOP’s signature accomplishment to tout in advance of November mid-terms?
Big monthly budget deficit, says Treasury. The department announced this week that February’s budget deficit of $215 billion is the largest monthly deficit recorded since February 2012. Last month’s revenue, meanwhile, fell to $156 billion, a 9 percent drop from this time last year.
Rex Tillerson may be out of a job, but still has a tax deal. The now-fired Secretary of State and former Exxon Mobil chief can keep the millions of dollars in tax deferrals he received when he joined the Trump Administration. When he took the State job, Tillerson sold more than 600,000 Exxon shares valued at about $54 million. Those proceeds went into a trust, as well as the value of more than 2 million deferred Exxon shares that Tillerson would have received over the next 10 years had he remained at Exxon. Federal ethics law allows Tillerson to defer paying capital gains tax on that money, even though he served as Secretary of State for just under a year.
In Cincinnati, pay to play. Cincinnati’s public school board won’t swap land with United Soccer League team FC Cincinnati unless the team offers to pay more in yearly school property taxes on its future $250 million stadium. FC Cincinnati has offered to make a $100,000 yearly payment in school property taxes, increasing the payments to $500,000 by 2031. But that’s not enough, the board says: “The Board of Education will not consider a proposal to swap property with FC Cincinnati unless FC Cincinnati promises to pay CPS its fair share of property taxes on a new stadium built in the district.” This is the second offer the school board rejected.
In the United Kingdom: Tax tech revenues, not profits? The government’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Phillip Hammond, says it’s worth considering temporarily taxing revenues of companies like Google and Facebook. Something needs to be done while the UK and international partners like the European Union figure out how best to assure that the companies pay their fair share in corporate tax. Said Hammond: “The current misalignment between where digital businesses are taxed and where they create value threatens to undermine the fairness, sustainability and public acceptability of the corporate tax system.”
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