After a harsh winter death visited our home. Oh, we know this happens and we accept that they can’t be avoided. Still, there’s confusion and all sorts of details to work out.
Fortunately, help can be bought.
A few days later they rolled a new, shiny black range into our kitchen to replace the white unit with no working oven and just three reliable burners. They also replaced the old, white hood with a new black hood.
As customary back when, the old hood had a single 40 watt bulb shielded by opaque plastic. The new hood has four LED bulbs, illuminating the stove with the equivalent of 300 watts. In other words, an explosion of bright white light that makes a speck of dust look like a boulder from 20 feet away.
Now, we ought to have expected this change. Prior to the old range’s demise we window-shopped various options: virtually all had really bright white halogen or LED bulbs. Still, that reality didn’t sink-in until the first time the lights came on in our kitchen – which suddenly looked dark and dated.
Life is full predictable events that become surprises. We have the capacity to look forward, to work-out what will happen based on current facts. Yet, most of the time most of us don’t do that.
Take tax reform, Washington and Jefferson City style. The Trump cuts are already in effect, even though the details remain hidden in plain sight.
For example, increasing the standard deduction and other tweaks severely limits the positive impact of giving to charity for most middle class families. And, it makes major bequests less advantageous…
It doubles – to $22.4 million – the amount a couple can pass to heirs, tax-free, without
any charitable gambits. It also halves from 21% to 9% – the share of individual
income tax filers benefiting from itemized charitable deductions. That could cost
charities as much as $20 billion a year in donations, according to estimates from
the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
“The real winners in this, as in the rest of the tax bill, are the wealthiest people,”
[philanthropy expert Robert] Sharpe Jr. says.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleaebeling/2018/04/10/charity-in-the-age-of-trump/#34d5f6aa1628
Yes, Americans are more charitable than residents of most other nations (though the Irish and Swiss are among the nations with a greater portion of donors [ https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/sep/08/charitable-giving-country ]). Still, most don’t tithe, even when strongly encouraged to share a tenth of their earnings from their favorite pulpit. And, those of us in the charitable realm long ago acknowledged that charitable giving competes with other discretionary spending. (I’ve never heard of someone cancelling their vacation in Hawaii to give that money to a food pantry.)
The result? Next spring many, many millions of Americans will learn that they no longer gain a tax advantage when they give $50 or $100 or even $1,000 to charity.
Yes, most will continue to give something: expect many charities to see substantial downturns in income in 2019.
While the federal cuts are now in effect, last week Missouri passed changes becoming code on January 1, 2019. While the gross rate for individual tax payers will fall, the effective rate calculation gets more complicated. Per House Bill 2450 [ https://house.mo.gov/billtracking/bills181/sumpdf/HB2540T.pdf ], Missourians will lose their $2,100 personal exemption now that the federal personal exemption is dead [ http://www.savingtoinvest.com/losing-my-4050-personal-exemptions-in-2018/ ].
Plus, Missouri begins phasing-out the state deduction for federal taxes paid beginning next year.
Those changes result in closet tax increases for many people – though Missouri’s tax code remains largely stapled to the federal when it comes to the standard deduction and the offset for charity gifts. The end result will be even more reason for Missourians to give less to charity.
Confused? Don’t worry. All the predictable surprises will turn bright white and black on your coming tax returns.
In our kitchen the new cooktop really heats-up quickly. I learned that when a combination of strawberry vinaigrette and teriyaki sauce covering chicken boiled over…boy did that look messy under those bright new lights.
Submitted by Glenn Koenen, WCD Member