President Joe Biden’s budget threatens Main Street

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act brought historic tax relief to taxpayers. For example, taxpayers and small business owners across Iowa benefited greatly from the economic growth created by the TCJA. Many businesses expanded, hired new workers, and increased wages or provided bonuses to their employees.

The TCJA also sparked a tax reform effort in Iowa with Gov. Kim Reynolds and the Republicanled legislature enacting income tax rate reductions starting in 2018 and leading to last year’s historic tax reform measure that will create a flat 3.9% rate by 2026.

The economic benefits of the TCJA are clear, but key provisions will expire in 2025, and President Joe Biden’s 2024 budget proposal threatens significant tax increases that will harm taxpayers.

The TCJA cut individual and corporate income tax rates and reduced taxes for small businesses. All individual rates were lowered while the corporate rate fell from 35% to 21%. The TCJA also lowered and widened the tax brackets that benefited middle and lower class taxpayers. In addition, the TCJA made significant tax reforms that finally aided small businesses creating the small business deduction

(section 199A), which is a 20% tax deduction for small business income. Nevertheless, since the reforms in the TCJA were not permanent, many are set to expire after Dec, 31, 2025. If this is allowed to occur, most taxpayers will be faced with a large tax increase.

Further, President Biden’s $6.8 trillion budget proposal calls for an estimated $4.7 trillion in new tax increases that will be especially harmful for small businesses. Some of the proposed tax increases would reverse the TCJA including raising the top income tax rate back to 39.6%, creating a new 5% tax on small business income, increasing the corporate tax rate to 28%, among other increases. President Biden is arguing that these tax increases will only impact those at the very top, but what is often forgotten is that many small businesses will be greatly impacted as they pay their business taxes via the individual personal income tax rates.

Iowa taxpayers and small businesses have struggled to

As of this writing, the indictment of the former — and possibly future — President Donald Trump brings to mind the movie “Escape from New York.” Of course, the target is a conservative, much as it was when “someone” leaked the pending opinion in Supreme Court opinion in the abortion case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in order to create a reaction to influence the decision makers. When this failed, they started picketing the home of the conservative justices, but not liberal justices, as the DOJ refuses to enforce the law barring such pickets. Similarly, did “someone” leak the Trump indictment — in advance of it being unsealed this week — to cause a reaction to influence voters and potential jurors?

Rumors are that some Democrats were hoping the leaked news would provoke Republicans to react in a way that they could, have and are, using the activities of Jan. 6.

A rumor had previously surfaced that the top FBI officials had hoped for the same results when sending agents with automatic weapons to raid his home at Mar-a-Lago for documents he had offered them. When there were no riots, the rumors were that the top brass kidded that they needed a Ray Epps, a reference to the man with the megaphone inciting people to enter the Capitol on Jan. 6 but who was not charged. Was this the reason for the leak in the indictment?

The reference to the movie “Escape for New York” is appropriate as this was a story about the crime in New York City being so out of control that there was no justice after the city’s Manhattan borough was made into a maximum-security prison. Director John Carpenter used actors Kirk Russell, Lee Van Clief and Ernest Borgnine to present the story of the convicts being able to force a president to come into their prison in Manhattan. Getting chills yet?

I wonder when the writers John Carpenter and Nick Castle wrote their script in 1981, they experienced a Nostradamustype moment, or if they based their story on their actual experiences that may have been similar to a few of mine in the 1970s?

For example, when one of my legal cases was in the Bronx, crime caused my local management person to drop me off rather than accompany me into the court house. Once inside, I saw why.

My laughing at the sign above the judge proclaiming “No spitting” was interrupted by the spat as the first defendant punctuated his sentences by loudly spitting on the floor. By the third defendant, even the judge no longer appeared to notice the spats.

My being the only person in a suit, as well as the only “nonspitter,” caused all the others to ask if I was a public defender. The men’s room had an armed policeman stationed there. I felt for the guard and the judge. At about the time the Eagles were writing “This could be heaven…” in their song “Hotel California,” it could have been applicable to my business trips beginning with runs in Central Park and finishing with walks to dinners and Broadway shows.

However, even then as the Eagles completed the above sentence with “or this could be hell,” there were indications of crime even in the federal courthouse in Manhattan. For