Republican Tax Plan Cuts Middle Class and Corporate Taxes, Leaves Retirement Savings Safe

House Republicans are unveiling their bill to overhaul the U.S. tax code Thursday.

We’ll follow along with the news and analysis of the bill all day. Refresh this page for the latest updates.

Here are the highlights:

• The House bill reportedly will permanently and immediately cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent. Lawmakers dropped earlier plans to phase-in the tax cut over a number of years or have the cut sunset in the future, both measures aimed at reducing–on paper, at least–their impact on long-term budget deficits.
• The pass-through rate will be 25 percent, a huge cut for many small-businesses organized as sole-proprietorships and partnerships.
• As first reported by Breitbart in August, the bill will impose a one-time tax on corporate profits that have been accumulated and held abroad. By taxing these profits at 12 percent on a one-time basis, the bill eliminates the incentive for corporations to continue to avoid repatriating the funds and investing them in America or distributing them to shareholders.
• The risky plan to change the way Americans save for retirement, and possibly raise taxes on middle-income Americans, has been dropped. The bill will not change 401(k)s, according to talking points distributed by the House GOP leadership.
• The bill is named the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, breaking with recent Washington precedent of giving bills titles with acronyms that indicate the goals of the legislation.
• The bill cuts the current seven individual tax brackets down to four: 12 percent, 25 percent, 35 percent, and 39.6%. Originally, the GOP framework planned to drop the 39.6 percent rate. It was preserved in an effort to prevent tax burden from shifting to lower income taxpayers.
• A big question has been where the new brackets would break. Now we know. For individuals, the 25 percent rate starts at $45,000, the 35 percent rate at $200,000, and the 39.6 percent rate at $500,000. For married couples filing together, the 25 percent rate will start at $90,000, the 35 percent rate at $260,000, and the 39.6 percent rate at $1 million.
• Standard deduction rises to $12,000 from $6,350 for individuals, and from $12,700 to $24,000 for married couples.
• The House bill expands the child tax credit from $1,000 to $1,600, which is a smaller expansion than conservative lawmakers in the Senate had pushed for.
• The threshold for the death tax will double from its current $5.6 million per person and $11.2 million per married couple. It would be ended altogether in 2024.

10:38 A.M. While we wait for the actual bill, we’ll note there are no changes to the charitable giving deduction. Still, the larger standard deduction could make itemizing less attractive for many taxpayers, which would make the charity deduction less relevant. Charities had pushed for changes to keep the deduction relevant for a larger set of taxpayers.

10:29 A.M.  We saved the 401(k)! The bill “makes no changes to the popular retirement savings options that Americans have today — including 401(k)’s and Individual Retirement Accounts, or I.R.A.s. Americans will be able to continuing making both traditional, pretax contributions and ‘Roth’ contributions in the way that works best for them,” according to talking points distributed by GOP leadership on Thursday.

10:15 A.M. The bill includes limits on the home mortgage-interest deduction, sure to spark resistance from the real estate and mortgage banking industries. While existing mortgages are grandfathered in for loans up to $1 million, for new home purchase mortgages the cap falls to $500,000.

9:50 A.M. Here’s what we wrote last night about what to expect from the tax bill.