What’s on President-elect Trump’s Tax Reform List?

It’s been 30 years since the last tax reform, but President-elect Trump is planning for a change. Joe and Al take a comprehensive look into Trump’s proposals and discuss how his potential tax law changes could affect you.

Reduce income tax brackets from seven brackets (10-39.6%) to three (12%, 25%, 33%) (3:00 min)
Increase standard deduction (5:48 min)
Remove personal exemptions (6:50 min)

3:03: “Right now we have 7 [tax brackets] and Trump is proposing to go down to three.”

3:10 “A lot of people are predicting that these first 100 days that Trump is in office, we might see a lot of action.”

5:30 “[Trump] is combining the 10% and 15% tax bracket to 12%.”

5:48 “It all depends on what happens with the standard deduction. They are looking at doubling up the standard deduction. So for lower wage income earners that doubling up of the standard deduction will potentially have less money taxed going into that 12%, where before they might have been taxed a little bit earlier on the 10%.”

6:08 “The exact numbers if you’re single, you get a standard deduction right now of $6,300 and $12,600 if you’re married…”

6:40 “The new numbers being proposed would be a standard deduction of $15,000 if you’re single and $30,000 if you’re married.”

6:50 “However, right now we get an exemption of about $4,050 per person, including dependents. Trump plans to get rid of that.”

8:30 “The biggest tax savings will be clearly for those who make a lot of money.”

8:34 “LeBron James, he’s going to save $15 million in taxes.”

10:05 “The last major reform was 1986, Reagan years. That was the tax simplification act.”

11:40 “How you get to your taxable income today is after your exclusions and exemptions.”

13:00 “[The proposed tax changes] could hurt those with a lot of kids.”

15:15 “Let’s get into capital gains. If you follow what Trump is saying, capital gains is not going to change except for the net investment income tax on top of capital gains.”

15:38 “The net investment income tax is not taxed on ordinary income.”

15:45 “The capital gains rate, as well as what’s proposed by Trump, is as a married couple, the first $75,000 of taxable income, capital gains are taxed at 0%. There is no tax, they are actually tax free.”

16:16 “Then you look at, up to the 25% tax bracket into the 39.6% bracket, you’re at 15% and then it’s at 20%. Basically the new capital gains law, and Trump’s side is the same. If you look at Paul Ryan’s it’s a little bit different. It’s 6.5% and then it goes to 12.5% to 16.5% – those are the three different levels depending on your holding period.”

16:47 “One difference with Trump is that the 20% rate will kick in at the highest bracket which he’s proposing at $225,000 of taxable income and right now for a married couple that highest rate doesn’t happen until about $460,000 of taxable income. So that would actually be a slight increase.”

18:15 “Right now is such a key time to be thinking about year-end tax planning because the tax law may change.”

23:00 “That’s a great way to create tax-free income in retirement is to net your losses with your capital gain income and then you don’t pay any tax on that.”