New Presidential Administration
The Impact of Proposed Policy Changes
Reading
Between
the Lines
I
s it just me, or does anyone else feel caught in a holding pattern
when it comes to taxes? The year is almost over, next year’s
tax season will be upon us before we know it, and we’re all still
wondering how tax changes will impact us.
While I don’t have a crystal ball to peer into, if you look for trends in
the news that have come out the past few months, you can make
some assumptions about what to keep an eye on. Here are two pop-
ular tax reform initiatives to pay attention to:
Income tax rate changes
A consistent theme is to “lower income tax rates” for both individuals
and businesses. But, when you say “lower income tax rates” and you
don’t also say “cut spending,” you have to make up the lost revenue
from the rate cut somewhere – after all you still have to pay for the
same stuff.
To do this, the theme has been to cut currently available tax deduc-
tions, as well as the tax rate. Whenever you cut deductions some
people will be hit harder than others. Unfortunately for us, the Ohio
small business owner may be one of those groups.
State and local tax deductions, as well as other itemized tax deduc-
tions, are on the chopping block. Because Ohio has a relatively high
tax rate when state, city and property taxes are combined, the loss of
the state and local deduction could hit Ohio indi-
viduals a bit harder than in other states.
By Joe Popp, JD, LLM, senior tax manager,
[email protected] (Dublin office)
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