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by WalterBright 330 days ago
> it would be hard to do in good faith

QSBS is capped, and the SALT deduction goes away with increasing MAGI. They're targeted at the upper middle class, not the wealthy.

The "S" in QSBS stands for "Small" business.

The previous limits were fixed, and this change seems to be adjusting it for inflation. It's been around since 1993. An inflation adjustment is not a "cut".

Even so, as I'm sure you're aware, these two items are not what people mean by "tax cuts for the wealthy". If you ask anyone (other than a tax accountant) what a QSBS deduction is, you'll get a blank stare.
1 comments
FreakLegion 330 days ago
QSBS is only capped for sweat equity. My Series A lead gets a $200m exclusion. With the new $75m asset limit, the Series B lead will probably triple that.

Things like QSBS and carried interest are absolutely part of what people mean by "tax cuts for the wealthy".

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WalterBright 330 days ago
> Things like QSBS and carried interest are absolutely part of what people mean by "tax cuts for the wealthy".

No they aren't. Nobody mentions them on the news/editorials, nobody's heard of them but you and I. What people meant is the marginal tax rate.

I am not a tax accountant, and never heard of them before your mention. I spent some time googling it, and it looks like the limits were adjusted for inflation.

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FreakLegion 330 days ago
Yes, they are.

You're wrong that nobody's heard of these things and that they aren't in the news. Pick up the NYT or Fortune or any moderately substantive source. These issues have been discussed all over for decades, and they came up again repeatedly in the context of the BBB. QSBS and SALT came up because of their expansions, and carried interest came up because Trump promised to eliminate it but didn't. I didn't go digging for this information. It was handed to me.

More importantly you're wrong that people only think of tax cuts in terms of marginal rates, and that they need to know about specific schemes like QSBS and carried interest to include them in the broader idea of tax cuts for the wealthy. People have a general awareness that such schemes (popularly: "loopholes") exist and benefit the wealthy. The names of the schemes and how each one works don't matter. People know they exist and what they amount to.

So: The idea that people don't know about specific tax schemes used by the wealthy, and therefore don't think of these schemes as tax cuts for the wealthy, is wrong, and the idea that people need to know about specific tax schemes used by the wealthy in order to think of those schemes as tax cuts for the wealthy is also wrong. The first is wrong empirically, and the second is wrong logically.

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WalterBright 330 days ago
You're confusing what you know with general knowledge. I read the WSJ every day and never saw this mentioned.

> you're wrong that people only think of tax cuts in terms of marginal rates

No evidence for your case, other than a vague notion of "loopholes".

Besides, there is no requirement for wealth in order to invest in a QSBS.

As for SALT, it starts getting phased out at $500,000 and goes to zero at $1m.

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