You may recall last week's frenetic pace in the Senate as Mitch McConnell labored to bring all of the Republicans he could under the umbrella of tax cuts for the privileged. It seems that in his haste, McConnell managed to axe all of the goodies for corporations while dropping tax rates down to 20 percent.
NY Mag reports that in his zeal to hand out some incentives to senators like Susan Collins, he had to offset them with revenue.
How better to fix that than to reinstate the corporate Alternative Minimum Tax, which provides that corporations shall pay 20 percent of their income no matter what? Well, the problem is that they lowered the regular corporate tax rate to 20 percent.
In hindsight, McConnell should have asked for an extension. While Republicans were manically outlining their plans to take from the poor to give to the Trumps, they also, accidentally, nullified all of their corporate donors’ favorite deductions.
The Senate bill brings the normal corporate rate down to 20 percent — while leaving the alternative minimum rate at … 20 percent. The legislation would still allow corporations to claim a wide variety of tax credits and deductions — it just renders all them completely worthless. Companies can either take no deductions, and pay a 20 percent rate — or take lots of deductions … and pay a 20 percent rate.
Oops. For want of a committee meeting, the tax bill was lost -- or at least, substantial tax breaks made permanent for the billionaires paying good money for Senate Republicans to lower their damned taxes.
This has their donors in a tizzy, with the bill heading toward a conference committee to reconcile the various provisions, forcing a vote in the Senate and the House again on the same bill.
Something tells me it will be infinitely harder to get to 51 next time around. Protests are already forming. People are already in the streets. And donors are not happy campers.
Stay tuned for the next installment of Stupid Tax Tricks by Senate Republicans.