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The GOP tax plan is heading for conference committee. What happens next?

By Lauren Fox and Phil Mattingly, CNN

Updated 4:45 PM ET, Mon December 4, 2017
Winners and losers of the Senate tax bill

VIDEO: Winners and losers of the Senate tax bill 02:37 Source: CNN

Story highlights

Following the bill's passing through the Senate, both chambers hold a conference this week

The Senate and the House have significant differences to reconcile

Washington (CNN)Republicans passed their tax bill in the wee hours of Saturday morning, marking a significant triumph for a body that failed last time around to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

But Republicans held back from celebrating too much Saturday both because it was 2 a.m. and because everyone acknowledged there are still plenty of obstacles ahead.

Welcome to a rare process in the US Congress: a real, live conference committee.

Key differences between House and Senate

A conference is intended to help Republicans in the House and Senate sort out their differences. And there are plenty.

* The Senate bill sunsets tax breaks for individuals in 2025, something it did to save money so their bill would meet reconciliation rules. The House bill makes its individual tax cuts permanent. The corporate rate, meanwhile, would be permanent in both bills.

* Speaking of the corporate tax rate. The Senate bill enacts its 20% corporate rate in 2019. The House bill enacts its 20% corporate rate right away in 2018.

* The Senate bill repeals Obamacare's individual mandate. The House bill does not.

* The Senate bill doubles the exemption on the estate tax so that you could pass down up to $11 million tax free, but the House bill entirely repeals the estate tax in 2024 so you could pass down any amount of money tax free.

* The Senate bill maintains the current mortgage interest deduction of $1 million. The House bill cut it in half to $500,000

* The House bill repealed the alternative minimum tax. The Senate bill maintained it.

* The Senate bill has seven tax brackets and they lowered the top rate. The House has four and they maintained the top rate.

* There are major differences between how the Senate and House structure taxes for so-called pass-through businesses. It's a bit complicated, but just know that it could be a major sticking point. It already was in both chambers.

There are even more than that, but those are the biggies.

Continued: http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/04/politics/tax-reform-state-of-play/index.html

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What’s next for the tax bill?

By Mitchell Hartman
December 04, 2017 | 11:49 AM


Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) arriving for a rally to promote tax reform legislation with fellow Senate GOP
leaders and representatives a few days prior to the Senate's passage of the tax bill. - Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Now that the Republican majority in the Senate has passed its version of a controversial tax bill, a new process begins. And it could be just as complicated and byzantine: melding the two tax bills into one so it can pass both chambers of Congress and go on to President Donald Trump for his signature.

The House and Senate bills include a lot of the same tax code changes, but there are also differences. The House wants to reduce the number of tax brackets to four (12 percent, 25 percent, 35 percent and 39.6 percent for top earners), while the Senate would keep it at seven, our current number, albeit with some changes to the rates. The House wants to double the estate tax and then eventually phase it out, while the Senate would keep the estate tax and raise the threshold to $11 million.

“The only thing that’s required is that the House and the Senate pass a bill in identical form," said Steven Smith, director of the Center on the Economy, Government and Public Policy at Washington University.

Smith said historically, getting to a single bill has been the job of a bipartisan conference committee.

But GOP leaders plan to pass this with only Republican votes. So the negotiations will happen between Republicans, said James Thurber at American University’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies.

“It could be a fait accompli, with the leaders deciding behind the scenes what would be in it, and then the conference committee would simply announce: ‘this is what we’ve agreed to,’” Thurber added.

But even that could prove too hard for Republicans, noted Norman Ornstein from the American Enterprise Institute. And that'll leave them one other option:

“Just take the Senate bill and bring it up for a vote in the House. And have Speaker [Paul] Ryan tell his Republicans: ‘This is your last chance. Things here you don’t like — hold your nose and vote for it,’” he said.

If it passes, the tax overhaul would be the most sweeping since the 1980s.

https://www.marketplace.org/2017/12/04/economy/what-s-next-tax-bill

See also:

CBO Analysis Rewards GOP Senators With Conclusion That It's Meaner Than They Thought
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THE REPUBLICAN WAR ON COLLEGE
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Rushing a Tax Bill Through Congress
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Brent Budowsky: Tax cut warning to GOP
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The Biggest Tax Scam in History
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Peg -- it's absolutely deliberate, self-consciously intended and done
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"Senate GOP clears key hurdle on tax bill, moving closer to a final vote"

Late thought from - Trump veers past guardrails, feeling impervious to the uproar he causes

[...]

Trump traveled on Wednesday to Missouri, where he pitched the tax overhaul plan. He explained that he did not mind that the bill might
close loopholes for the wealthy like himself. He was talking about taxes, but he might as well been describing his overall mind-set.

“Hey, look, I’m president,” Trump said. “I don’t care. I don’t care anymore.”
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Politics aside, it must hurt millions to have a lying scumbag as a president. It doesn't bode well without change.

Those also linked here, Trump Sells Tax Plan With False Claims
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