Raise taxes on wealthy...........

‘No tax’ fever hits Congress

What began with President Donald Trump’s signature tax cuts has sprung copycats, with lawmakers from both sides of the aisle proposing breaks on everything from boat loan interest to selling New Jersey swag.

Ali Bianco

Special tax carve-outs for everyday Americans are suddenly all the rage in Congress.

What began with President Donald Trump’s signature tax cuts has sprung copycats, with lawmakers from both sides of the aisle proposing breaks on virtually everything — from boat loan interest to selling New Jersey swag.

“Must be an election year,” said Rep. David Schweikert, a retiring tax writer.

It’s all part of lawmakers’ push to show they’re responding to voters’ affordability concerns ahead of the midterms, despite the mixed reviews for last year’s GOP tax cuts — even from Trump supporters.

The slew of targeted tax break proposals are modeled and named after some of the best known provisions of Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act, with titles like “No Taxes on Utility Bills” and “No Tax on Health Care.”

Still, they’ve spurred frustrations from some conservatives over clogging the tax code with smaller, specific changes, while progressives worry the breaks eat into funding dollars they’d like to see go elsewhere. And fiscal hawks have sounded off on concerns over shrinking the tax base while the U.S. has a sky-high deficit.

None of this is set to go away anytime soon, tax experts say, as provisions from the megabill are poised to expire in 2028. That leaves lawmakers with an opportunity to extend and create more special exemptions in addition to the tax breaks on tips, overtime, seniors and car-loan interest.

“These policies elicited eye rolls with Republicans while they were crafting the tax bill — these were just Trumpist favors they had to include before getting to the real tax cuts,” said Jessica Riedl, a former Republican tax aide now at Brookings Institution. “Over time, Republicans have increasingly embraced this kind of stuff. I don’t think this is a temporary trend.”

Plus, for Democrats, there’s the exemptions that possible 2028 hopefuls have been looking to enact, from Sen. Jon Ossoff’s proposal to temporarily allow farmers to shield crop payments from taxes to Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s plan to strike everyone earning less than $46,000 from paying federal income taxes.

And both parties recognize that allowing the breaks to lapse during a presidential election year could be a risky gambit.

“I don’t know what they think is going to happen,” said Bob Lord, a vice president at Patriotic Millionaires, a group of wealthy individuals who support higher taxes, who helped devise Van Hollen’s plan. “If they do away with no tax on tips, well, they can kiss the state of Nevada goodbye.”