The absurdity of Donald Trump

[glatt]

Snow day here, and we just did our taxes.

Bottom line, between my slight increase in income from working longer hours, and slight increase in taxes, it appears as though my Federal tax burden remains virtually unchanged under Trump's "tax cut" from a year ago.

HOWEVER, the major change was to deductions. He eleminated many of the deductions that we can take, and raised the standard deduction at the same time. So we took the standard deduction. If we hadn't, our taxes would have gone UP by a few grand. The unfortunate side effect is that under Virginia law, if you take the standard deduction on your federal filling, you are required to take it on your Virginia filling as well. And the Virginia standard deduction is several thousand less than our itemized state deduction would be if we could use it. All this is to say that our state taxes went up by several hundred dollars.

If we go back and try to itemize or federal deductions to get the itemized state deductions, then the federal taxes go through the roof and it's not worth it.

So the Trump tax plan increased my state taxes.