You already know the highlights: the Big Beautiful Bill (BBB) is Congress’s latest effort to stuff 10 pounds of tax cuts into a five-pound bag. It locks in most of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Marginal rates stay low. The standard deduction stays chunky. The qualified business income deduction lives to fight another day. Cue the confetti (and another round of Roth conversions while you’re at it).
taxrelief
May the Force Be with You
Hard to believe it is, but taxes lie at the heart of the Star Wars universe. In Episode One: The Phantom Menace, in the very first paragraph of the opening crawl, we learned that taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems was in dispute. The Galactic Senate had imposed taxes to fight interplanetary pirates, and in response, the Trade Foundation had blockaded shipping to Naboo to pressure the Senate into repealing those taxes. The Supreme Chancellor dispatched two Jedi Knights to resolve the dispute… and the adventure began!
Wanted: Dead or Alive
It’s no secret Uncle Sam has been living above his means. He hasn’t balanced his budget since 2001. He put trillions on his American Express card to pay for Covid relief. And now, as he struggles to extend the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 later this year, he’s fighting to flesh out a budget resolution that authorizes $86 trillion in spending through 2034. If he was your real uncle, you might be googling “Debtors Anonymous” meetings in your neighborhood.
Pizza Pizza
In 2016, the curtain rose on Ben Affleck’s movie, The Accountant. Spoiler alert: he’s not just an accountant. Sure, the character Christian Wolff spends his workdays laundering money for the mob. But what accountant doesn’t do that? (Well, besides us.) No, the real surprise is that he’s a stone-cold killer, taking out 28 characters in the course of a meandering, two-hour plot. If you watch closely enough, you’ll even see one guy get killed twice.
Cool Cats
Someday, accountants will be cool. I don’t just mean in the “Oh, you’re majoring in accounting, that’s cool” sense. I mean Steve-McQueen-cruising-through-Rome-on-a-Vespa cool. Someday, little kids who dream of growing up to be accountants will collect bubblegum cards with Big Four partners’ pictures on one side and detailed career stats on the back. (Tax dollars saved, by year! Endorses checks: right-handed!) When they get to high school, they’ll be as popular as the quarterback of the football team and the Homecoming Queen. (56.8% of CPAs are women.) Someday, cool college kids will skip fraternities to party with the Accounting Club.
2025 Tax Forecast
2025 promises to be a big year for taxes. Right now, the individual provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 set our current standard deductions and tax brackets. Those rules expire, like Cinderella’s carriage at midnight on December 31. At that point, if Washington hasn’t extended them, taxes go up for as much as 80% of Americans. That’s an unacceptable result for Democrats and Republicans alike. And it promises a bruising effort ahead as Congress weighs continuing the cuts against a $36 trillion national debt.