S. 3412

Following up on this post, the bill the Senate approved is S. 3412.  It passed the Senate 51-48.  Interesting that the Republicans neglected to filibuster it.  To correct my earlier post, it won't need to be taken up by the Senate if the House doesn't change it, it will go straight to the President.

That's the outcome I now expect.

To answer the lingering question in that earlier post, S. 3412 does include the AMT patch.  That bolsters the odds that this is the legislation that will be enacted.  I've read that a retroactive AMT fix, after the new year begins, is theoretically possible but inevitably would delay refunds even more.  It's a bad, bad idea.

More info on S. 3412 is found here.

I've read the entire bill, which is quite short.  But it's written in legislative bafflegab, as amendments to prior legislation, so the meaning is hard to ferret out.  Specifically, I'm unclear on what happens to the estate tax, which is not directly mentioned.

In any event, passage of this bill would mean we get to do this all over again next year, as it is for 2013 only. Theoretically, the idea seems to be that tax reform will really, really, finally, be attended to next year.

Want to restore economic growth? Go back to the bipartisan 1986 tax reform act, and you'll get your economic growth back.