When you write huge tax breaks on the back of a cocktail napkin, then ram it through congress at one minute before midnight, shit happens.
The glitches in the new tax law are starting to pile up.
One inadvertently denies restaurants, retailers and others generous new write-offs for things like remodeling.
Another would allow wealthy money managers to sidestep a crackdown on lucrative tax break that allows them pay lower taxes on some of their income than ordinary wage earners. A third creates two different start dates for new rules that make it harder for businesses to shave their tax bills.
There are dozens of other snafus, hitting everything from real estate investments to multinational corporations to farmers.
It’s hardly surprising there would be bugs in the sprawling new law H.R. 1 (115), but some experts say the sheer number is unusual, and blame the breakneck pace at which the legislation was pushed through Congress.
“This is not normal,” said Marty Sullivan, chief economist at the nonpartisan Tax Analysts. “There’s always this kind of stuff, but the order of magnitude is entirely different.”
