4 Good Things in a Bad Tax Bill

The Tax Reform Act of 1986 was a landmark piece of bipartisan legislation, preceded by years of groundwork by Treasury Department experts and carefully crafted to permanently lower tax rates while not putting a significant dent in tax revenue. Yet a year after its passage, Congress was already tweaking the tax code. In 1990 lawmakers did away with one of the tax reform law's signature accomplishments, the top income tax rate of 28 percent (it was raised to 31 percent). They have been assiduously adding complications to the tax code ever since.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 has been billed as the biggest rewrite of the tax code since 1986. But if it is enacted this week as expected, it will be entirely along party lines. The legislation is projected to put a major dent in tax revenue -- a dent that would be even bigger if so many of its provisions weren't set to expire in a few years. And it was assembled in rushed, at times haphazard, fashion. As a group of prominent tax scholars argued in an assessment released Monday: