H.R. 6760, the Protecting Family and Small Business Tax Cuts Act of 2018, would repeal the December 31, 2025 expiration date for numerous provisions of U.S. tax law that were temporarily changed by the 2017 tax act (Public Law 115-97). The bill would make permanent the individual income tax brackets and tax rates, standard deduction and child tax credit amounts, business income deduction, and exemption amounts for the Alternative Minimum Tax in effect under current law. Deductions for personal exemptions and certain itemized deductions would be permanently repealed.
The staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimates that enacting the bill would reduce revenues by about $597 billion over the 2019-2028 period, and increase outlays by $34 billion over the same period, leading to an increase in the deficit of $631 billion over the next 10 years. A portion of the changes in revenues would be from Social Security payroll taxes, which are off-budget. Excluding the estimated $687 million increase in off-budget revenues over the next 10 years, JCT estimates that H.R. 6760 would increase on-budget deficits by about $632 billion over the period from 2019 to 2028. Pay-as-you-go procedures apply because enacting the legislation would affect direct spending and revenues.
JCT estimates that enacting H.R. 6760 would increase on-budget deficits by more than $5 billion in at least one of the four 10-year periods beginning in 2029. CBO and JCT estimate that enacting the legislation would increase net direct spending by more than $2.5 billion in at least one of the four consecutive 10-year periods beginning in 2029.
Because of the magnitude of the estimated budgetary effects, this bill is considered to be “major legislation,” as defined in section 5107 of H. Con. Res. 71, the Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2018. Hence, it triggers the requirement that the cost estimate, to the extent practicable, include the budgetary impact of its macroeconomic effects. The staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation is currently analyzing changes in economic output, employment, capital stock, and other macroeconomic variables resulting from the bill for purposes of determining these budgetary effects. However, JCT indicates a macroeconomic analysis incorporating the full effects of all of the provisions in the bill, including interactions between these provisions, is not available at the time of filing of the committee report.
JCT has determined that the tax provisions of the bill contain no intergovernmental or private sector mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA).
