Simplification is a red herring (notice how corporate state taxes are still deductible). Republicans needed a pay-for for reducing corporate/passthrough taxes and eliminating the estate tax. It just so happens that high wage earners in high tax states tend to be Democrats.

> literally if you didn't have deductions out of $100k you might have a $30k take home.

That is just not true. Up until very recently, I had ZERO deductions I could take. I made over $100k in San Francisco and my take home was about 65% of my income.

If you paid state income tax, you should have been able to deduct that at the very least (probably around 6k, or about the same as the standard deduction).

I would always try to itemize my deductions, but every time the standard deduction always ended up being more.

which makes it not worth the paperwork effort to do so.

Are you kidding me? $6k deductions is about $2k in rebates. A $150 accountant fee would take care of any paperwork. Taxes aren't that fucking hard.

6k in deductions is equal to the standard deduction

The effort is something like filling in one line, adding up a handful of numbers, copying the result to another line, selecting which of two numbers is larger and copying that one to another line.

That hardly even merits the word "effort"...and if you are using tax prep software instead of filling out the forms by hand it isn't even that...it's just entering one number in one field.

why would you file itemized when your deductions are less than the standard deduction?

> The government is trying to simplify the tax code

False; the tax reform creates a whole host of new targeted tax breaks; it's not about simplification, just moving the tax burden. And, in net, moving it to the poor.

Reducing the number of brackets and removing a few of the simplest deductions while mostly leaving untouched or even increasing the hundreds or thousands of deductions that are generally only usable by companies and very wealthy people is not in any meaningful way simplifying the tax code.

>>Perhaps we should rethink the government being the biggest employer, and actually make taxes simple and uniform.

And pensions.

Pretty much bulk of the tax money collected goes out to pay pensions and various other social security benefits, which people awarded themselves way back in time assuming the coming generations will happily pay for with taxes.

Nobody and nothing can satisfy people who think they are entitled to free money.

Good luck, every single prop aimed at raising the California income taxes passed overwhelmingly. The financial bind of those who make $200,000 and live in SF is not quite shared by voters in San Bernardino, Sacramento or even east LA.

It might also turn out that the pension plans for state employees, teachers, prison guards and police have been underperforming, and unless those pension funds loaded up on Bitcoin at the right time, the California taxpayers are on the hook to make up the difference.

There’s a silver lining, of course - once the high-speed rail is completed, the ticket revenues for the masses excited to go between LA and SF will surely pay for everything.

>>It might also turn out that the pension plans for state employees, teachers, prison guards and police have been underperforming

More like they award themselves pensions that can be funded through these means. For eg: http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/11/01/bart-janitor-grossed-2...

There are many such articles written over the years, including those by Arnold Schwarzenegger, about the impossibility of paying pensions the tune to half a million dollars a year per person, for decades(Given how long people live these days).

Unions graciously award over time to employees to inflate their net compensation package in the last few years(as that is what decides the pensions).

Even productive people, who are at the peak of their performance struggle to make $500K/year. Paying that kind of cash for every single person disproportionate to the value they create/created is possible by only one means- Taxes.