MOORE IN THE WEEDS: But some of the other issues facing the justices, or the possible ramifications of their decisions, do get down into the nitty-gritty of tax policy. Among them: Charles and Kathleen Moore are challenging their $15,000 tax bill on a stake in an Indian business, because they and their lawyers argue that their earnings were unrealized — making the tax on them unconstitutional. But according to at least some experts, that argument doesn’t even make it to first base. The Moores might not have gotten any money in their pocket from that investment in the Indian firm, those experts say, but that income was certainly realized by the company itself — meaning the justices could essentially sidestep the case right there. As for the potential ramifications: If the justices do back the Moores and toss out the repatriation tax, they’ll also have to grapple with the question of whether all the companies that have already paid the tax would get their money back — and if so, what tax rate they might pay on a refund. (Not only that, would siding with the plaintiffs lead to other parts of the new tax system getting struck down, too?) There are more questions about how we got to this point, too: Did the Moores bungle their tax planning? And are they complaining about what amounts to a tax cut, after you do all the math? LET’S TAKE ANOTHER GANDER: It certainly doesn’t look like it’s going to be all that easy for Republicans to choose a new House speaker — and the longer that uncertainty hovers over the Capitol, the harder it might be for Democrats and the GOP to come together on a year-end tax bill. But for sure, people both inside and outside of Congress are working hard to see if a deal still can be made, with a package likely to be centered on expanding the Child Tax Credit and ending some of the business tax increase embedded in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. With that in mind, American Policy Ventures, a group working to spur bipartisan action in Washington, has released a new poll finding that likely general election voters do want Congress to expand the CTC — about two-thirds in all, according to the survey from Cygnal. Still, only a small segment of that healthy majority — about a fifth of likely voters in all — want to bring back the monthly child payment program that Democrats enacted in 2021. The rest, about 40 percent of likely voters, would rather see a more modest expansion — which, as it happens, looks to be a more likely outcome, given Republican opposition to that most recent CTC expansion. Close to half of poll respondents also said they would support some kind of bipartisan compromise on the child credit, with about 20 percent each saying they were opposed to a deal or didn’t have a thought either way. “This new poll convincingly shows that voters across the political spectrum want to see members of Congress from both sides of the aisle work on a bipartisan compromise to expand the Child Tax Credit,” said Paolo Mastrangelo, the co-founder and co-president of American Policy Ventures. The poll, Mastrangelo added, is just the latest piece of evidence “that shows lawmakers can and should work together on this issue without fear of any political disincentive or retribution from their bases.” Along these lines: And of course, the SALT debate is never too far from any of these discussions. The latest there: Republicans from New York state are pressing the current candidates for speaker about how open they might be to offering relief to the $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions that was enacted by the 2017 GOP tax law, as Semafor’s Joseph Zeballos-Roig reported. Blue state Republicans are in a pretty distinct minority within their conference in wanting SALT cap relief, but it doesn’t sound like these New York Republicans are drawing any lines in the sand with the contenders for speaker.
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