House tax plan is out. While I know this isn't the final product, they are likely going to be increasing taxes on an unexpected group: Middle class families with 2 or more kids that itemize (i.e. have a mortgage). The killer for these people is the elimination of personal exemptions. That more than offsets any increase in standard deduction or child tax credits.
While I'm sure the GOP doesn't care about tax increases in blue states, I don't think it's a good idea to have a tax increase to fairly typical families in the middle class when that is what you are claiming to be helping.
It's early, so maybe I'm missing something, but the elimination of personal exemptions is getting little attention compared to all the flashy changes.
Hopefully there will be some blowback from people with kids and mortgages seeing that it's not exactly a small population of people. I can't imagine they don't tweak something to make up for this gap. It's probably going to get changed quite a bit, if it even passes at all.
EDIT: I think I underestimated the offsetting effect of the lower tax bracket rates. We'll see. My bet is it doesn't pass anyway.
