A House tax bill: Public after Halloween and passed by Thanksgiving. That’s the plan, according to Speaker Paul Ryan and Ways & Means Chair Kevin Brady. They plan to release a tax bill on Nov. 1 and have the House pass it by Thanksgiving. Hill sources say the Joint Committee on Taxation will have its formal score of the bill ready next week as well. The Senate GOP leadership plans to release its own version later in November and the Finance Committee would like to begin drafting its own bill soon after.  

But first, a budget resolution. Before any of this can happen, the House first must pass the Senate budget resolution, which Ryan says will happen tomorrow. House conservatives will swallow a fiscal plan that avoids some big spending cuts they favor and some even say they’ll defer to the Senate’s version of a tax bill in order to assure passage its passage. Whether they’ll be as compliant once they see it remains to be seen.

Yesterday’s lunch with President Trump and Senate Republicans was… awkward. The day began with GOP Sen. Bob Corker saying Trump “debases our country.” It ended with GOP Sen. Jeff Flake accusing Trump of  “flagrant disregard for truth and decency.” In between, the President had his first Capitol Hill meeting with the Senate Republican caucus. Majority Whip John Cornyn said “It wasn’t a whole lot about taxes….” Trump did ask the senators to vote on who they’d like to see chair the Federal Reserve Board.  

What will this tension mean for tax negotiations?  Corker urged Trump to step aside and let Congress write a tax bill. He said negotiations must address "$4 trillion  worth of loopholes and credits” to simply the tax code. And if the President continues to take things “off the table in advance, you really don't have a path,” Corker added.  Brady and Senate Finance Chair Orrin Hatch say the President’s recent tweets about what stays or goes will have no impact on tax writing. But efforts to preserve popular tax breaks might.

Who needs the mortgage interest deduction, anyway? TPC’s Len Burman—who like most economists is no fan of the mortgage interest deduction—explains that the highly prized tax preference could become irrelevant under the Big Six Unified Framework, even if lawmakers preserve it on paper. If Congress repeals other big-ticket itemized deductions and substantially increases the standard deduction, only about 4 percent of households would claim the mortgage interest deduction, down from one-in-five today.

Charities may receive less donations under the Big Six plan, too. Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy finds that expanding the standard deduction and decreasing marginal tax rates, as proposed by the Big Six, could reduce decrease charitable giving by between $4.9 billion and $13.1 billion a year. That translates to a drop in donations to religious organizations by as much as 4.7 percent and other charitable groups by 4.4 percent.

Then, there’s SALT. New York Rep. Peter King is telling the state’s big-ticket political donors to stop giving to the Republican party if Congress repeals the state and local tax deduction.  He says killing SALT would “decimate” New York.

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