Tax provisions in House Democrats’ bill would cost $883 billion: analysis

The tax-related provisions in House Democrats’ proposed coronavirus relief bill would reduce federal revenue by a net of $883 billion from fiscal years 2020 to 2030, Congress’s tax scorekeeper said in an analysis released Friday.

The analysis from the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) comes as the House is expected to pass the measure Friday on a near party-line vote. The bill is not expected to be taken up in the Republican-controlled Senate.

Much of the revenue loss from the bill’s tax provisions comes from those relating to direct payments to most Americans. The bill’s provision to create a second round of direct stimulus payments would lower federal revenue by $413 billion in fiscal years 2020 and 2021.

That amount is greater than the $292 billion of revenue loss the JCT estimated would result from the one-time payments established by a law President Trump signed in March. The direct payments in House Democrats’ bill are more generous for dependents.

In addition to the second round of direct payments, the JCT estimates that several other provisions in the Democrats’ bill would each lower federal revenue by more than $100 billion over a decade, including those to temporarily expand the child tax credit, eliminate the cap on the state and local tax deduction for two years, expand the employee retention tax credit, and provide COBRA subsidies to help workers losing their employer-sponsored health insurance.

Not every tax provision in House Democrats’ bill would result in reduced revenue. The JCT estimates that provisions relating to the tax treatment of businesses’ net operating losses would raise $254 billion from 2020 to 2030. These provisions would undo tax provisions in the CARES Act and make permanent a limit on the amount of losses owners of non-corporate businesses can deduct against non-business income.

The group’s analysis focuses just on the provisions in the bill that have an impact on federal revenue. The Congressional Budget Office is expected to release a fuller estimate of the cost of the bill at a later point. House Democrats expect the bill as a whole to have a cost of about $3 trillion.