There’s a “mysterious and important” debate in Congress on how to measure tax cuts

I really love the Apple TV+ show “Severance,” and I’m having an internal struggle about it that is not unlike the current struggle in Congress over how to measure tax cuts. 

In “Severance,” an evil company has found a way to sever employee’s minds. When they’re at work, they don’t remember the life they have outside of work. The show is so horrifying and dystopian, I find it oddly soothing.

What I do not find soothing is the $10 a month I pay to watch “Severance” on Apple TV+. But I signed up temporarily to watch it. Now the season finale has aired and it’s decision time. 

“So you have a month-to-month subscription, and you get to the point where you’re deciding, ‘Oh, do I, do I keep the subscription service or do I cancel it?’” said Chye-Ching Huang, executive director of the Tax Law Center at New York University. 

Here’s my dilemma — and Congress’. I could look at the situation like: “My show’s ending. It’s time to cancel Apple TV+ and save some money.” That’s the “current law baseline” Congress uses now.

Then there’s the “current policy baseline” part of my brain. It says: “You’ve been paying for Apple TV+ for months. This isn’t some new expense you have to figure out. Just keep it.“

My streaming subscription struggle is basically what is happening in Congress, except instead of $10 for Apple TV+, it’s trillions of dollars for tax cuts.

“The way to think of current policy is: What’s the policy today?” said Neil Bradley, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Bradley thinks the way taxes are calculated in the budget should be changed to use the current policy baseline. “Current policy baseline reflects the reality of what’s happening in the real world,” he said.

 In the real world, Bradley said most people and businesses saw their taxes go down in 2017, and they’ve stayed down — that’s the policy we’re living under now. 

“Absent a current policy baseline, you’re going to have to sunset all of these tax provisions,” said Bradley. “ And so you end up with this huge tax cliff that no one believes actually that we should send the economy over.”

If the tax cuts expire, most households would see their taxes go up by at least $500. For the top 1%, it would be more like $60,000

Bradley said keeping the tax cuts in place isn’t a new cost, it’s a continuation of current policy.  

But Congress doesn’t calculate it that way. It uses the so-called current law baseline.

“So current law baseline is exactly how it sounds. It’s how the law is written,” said Jonathan Tucker, a partner at tax firm KBKG. He’s firmly in the current law baseline camp. “These tax cuts from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will expire. That is the law.” 

That means if Republicans want to extend the 2017 tax cuts this year, it will show up in the budget as a new government expense — an expensive one: roughly $4.5 trillion over the next 10 years.

“That would increase the deficit, right?” said Tucker. “Current law is the reality, right? The actual economic impact.” Tucker said the economic impact of these tax cuts is a major blow to the already worrisome deficit. And the current policy camp wants to ignore that.

“Current policy is kind of the funny math, if you will, to make it look like it’s not going to cost anything. But I’m a tax accountant, so I tend to like to deal with real numbers,” he said.

But this fight isn’t really about the numbers, it’s about the framing of those numbers. The GOP’s majority in Congress means the tax cuts will most likely be renewed, no matter who wins this war of the words.

So why the fight? NYU’s Chye-Ching Huang said the framing matters. 

“It changes the rhetoric,” she said. Current law baseline would mean Democrats can point to the tax cut extension and say: “The GOP is preaching about cutting government waste, but they are adding trillions to the deficit with these tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the super wealthy.”

If current policy baseline wins, Republicans can say, “We’re not adding to the deficit! The Democrats are just trying to raise everybody’s taxes.”

There are also some political process implications: Current policy baseline could make passing the tax cuts easier, and they wouldn’t have to come up for a vote again in the future.  

“But the reality for how the federal budget and how people will experience it is really the key thing to keep focused on,” said Huang. 

And the reality is this: The tax cuts will add trillions to an already crippling U.S. debt load. But, if they expire, most businesses and individuals will see their taxes go up at a moment when a lot of people are struggling financially.

The ultimate decision will be made by the Senate parliamentarian — a nonpartisan appointee, whose “mysterious and important” job, as they might say in “Severance,” is to wade through wonky word policy debates like this one.

Meanwhile, I have to make the call about whether to sever my ties with Apple TV+. Though I did hear “Severance” was renewed for a third season.