[quote=SK in CV]
Any examples of future tax benefits that have been written into the law and then reversed and repealed? I can’t think of any.[/quote]
What about the tax act of 1986. It did all of the following things that would seem to be removal of various tax advantages.
[quote]
Moreover, interest on consumer loans such as credit card debt was no longer deductible. An existing provision in the tax code, called Income Averaging, which reduced taxes for those only recently making a much higher salary than before, was eliminated (although later partially reinstated, for farmers in 1997 and for fishermen in 2004). The Act, however, increased the personal exemption and standard deduction.
The Individual Retirement Account (IRA) deduction was severely restricted. The IRA had been created as part of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, where employees not covered by a pension plan could contribute the lesser of $1500 or 15% of earned income.[6] The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 (ERTA) removed the pension plan clause and raised the contribution limit to $2000 or 100% of earned income. The 1986 Tax Reform Act retained the $2000 contribution limit, but restricted the deductibility for households that have pension plan coverage and have moderate to high incomes. Non-deductible contributions were allowed.
Depreciation deductions were also curtailed. Prior to ERTA81, depreciation was based on “useful life” calculations provided by the Treasury Department. ERTA81 set up the “accelerated cost recovery system,” or ACRS. This set up a series of useful lives based on 3 years for technical equipment, 5 years for non-technical office equipment, 10 years for industrial equipment, and 15 years for real property. TRA86 lengthened these lives, and lengthened them further for taxpayers covered by the alternative minimum tax (AMT). These latter, longer lives approximate “economic depreciation,” a concept economists have used to determine the actual life of an asset relative to its economic value.
Defined contribution pension contributions were curtailed. The law prior to TRA86 was that DC pension limits were the lesser of 25% of compensation or $30,000. This could be accomplished by any combination of elective deferrals and profit sharing contributions. TRA86 introduced an elective deferral limit of $7000, indexed to inflation. Since the profit sharing percentage must be uniform for all employees, this had the intended result of making more equitable contributions to 401(k)’s and other types of DC pension plans.
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