Mallory's Camera

So, I decided to be a Real Human Girl & spread the word among my various local social networks: I am looking for a new place to live; if you hear of anything...

(This is harder than you may think since I feel intense shame that, at my advanced age, I am still experiencing housing insecurity.)

One of the people I told was Adrienne when I was over at her house Friday going over some stuff for the political website I'm designing for her. Adrienne is what Malcolm Gladwell would call a connector.

I didn't think anything would come of it, but you know—ya gotta shake the trees.

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Then yesterday, I got a text: This is BlaBla's good friend Sue. She mentioned you are looking for a place to live?

The Adrienne connection! Thank you, Shawangunk Dems!

Sue & I texted for an hour and a half. She has found an amazing house in New Paltz! (She texted me the Zillow listing.) She loves cats! The landlord allows cats!

What can you tell from texts? Well, you can tell if you have sympatico conversational styles, if the same things make you laugh.

We have sympatico conversational styles. The same things make us laugh.

We will be meeting up in person tomorrow after I TaxBwana.

Several potential thorns in the rose—beyond the obvious, which is we could meet each other & just go, Ick:

First thorn: She wants to move by April. I told her regretfully that the earliest I could possibly move is May; she thought maybe she could negotiate with the landlord for a rent reduction for April & carry the rest of the rent herself for that month.

OmiGAWD. Somebody who's not too cowed to negotiate!

Second thorn: I cannot possibly afford the house if the rent is split two ways. I can afford it if the rent is split three ways, and it would be fabulous if the rent could be split four ways. (The house has four bedrooms.)

So, if we like each other in person & think we could be compatible housemates, we will have to scramble for other compatible housemates—by the 1st of May.

I suspect that is eminently doable. But, of course, there is a risk factor.

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I am afraid to hope. I am utterly convinced that anything I let myself want, I will not get.

So, I need my peeps to help manifest this for me. (lifeinroseland, I am looking at you!)

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In other news, I did a bunch of tax returns yesterday. I have around 15 friends & family members for whom I do tax returns every year. I will finish everyone's tax returns up today.

I didn't leave the house. It was cold & miserable out. Foreboding. And I'm trying to adhere to an every-other-day exercise schedule because aging body, refrain from the over-do! blah-blah-blah. So no gym.

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The political news is making me absolutely sick to my stomach.

Thirty Democrats voted to end cloture! And ten voted in favor of Trump's awful budget bill.

Democrats are only slightly less smelly pieces of shit than Republicans.

Somehow, we've got to figure out a way to get through this.

For more than a decade now, I’ve been volunteering three months a year as a tax preparer with an initiative called TaxAide. TaxAide does taxes for free-eee-eeee! And though we mostly deal with low-income clients, occasionally, we get people who gross more than $300,000 a year and have complicated capital gains and Schedule Cs.

The federal tax code is oddly fascinating to me. It’s kinda like epistemological archeology: You have a basic flat tax structure that was first set up 160 years ago to fund the Civil War, and every change, patch, and additional tax that’s been grafted onto that structure subsequently offers a deep dive into the political priorities of a historical era, now otherwise forgotten and ignored.

Every year, I have to pass a difficult examination to earn my certification from the IRS. I mention this to reassure all 4.3 of my readers that I have TAX CRED!

Because now, I am about to analyze the tax changes proposed by our incumbent President to illuminate his priorities. Which are not at all transparent.

I got this list of proposed tax changes from this document (scroll down to page 6), which is a list of “reconciliation options” (great euphemism!) currently in front of the House Ways & Means Committee.

• Repeal Green Energy Tax Credits
Up to $796 billion in 10-year savings

If I’m remembering correctly, many of these credits were passed as part of Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, and they are popular. Last year, more than 3.4 million households used them, and half of those households had incomes under $100,000 a year.

Toward the end of his first term, Trump actually signed a solar ITC extension, thereby halting the planned sunset of the original Obama legislation, so there is some likelihood that the solar installation credit will survive in some form. But I’m confident that you can kiss goodbye the credits related to clean vehicles, clean energy, other efficient building and home energy incentives, carbon sequestration, sustainable aviation fuels, environmental justice, biofuel, etc, etc.

• SSN Requirement for Child Tax Credit
$27.7 billion in 10-year savings

This is one of the components of Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that is due to sunset in 2025. So, all proposed legislation would do is continue the social security requirement.


• Various SALT deductions

“SALT” is an acronym for “State & Local Taxes,” a deduction for taxpayers who choose not to use the standard deduction but prefer to itemize instead. As such, elimination of SALT deductions disincentivizes itemizing.

This is a change likely to hit corporate tax preparers like H.R. Block & Intuit hard because while only 11% of people who do their own taxes itemize, 53% of people who use paid tax preparers itemize.

I am tempted to claim here that people who rely upon tax preparers overall have higher AGIs than people who do their own taxes ‘cause that’s just common sense. But I’ve been unable to track down hard data on this point, so my interpretation remains in the realm of interesting conjecture.

I do think H.R. Block and Intuit lobbyists will be putting in a lot of overtime, though.

• Eliminate the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction
About $1.0 trillion in 10-year savings relative to TCJA extension

The home mortgage interest deduction is another tax credit that only benefits people who itemize. It functions as a kind of rebate for people who buy homes, and it’s used by approximately 43% of homeowners in the U.S. As interest rates rise, the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction—particularly for first-time homeowners—is getting larger and larger.

But does the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction incentivize homeownership among low- and middle-income individuals? Well, not really since the primary barrier to entry there is the down payment.

In fact, this deduction may play a significant role in the proliferation of McMansions since people who can afford the down payment may now be more likely to take out larger mortgages than they otherwise would.

• Eliminate Nonprofit Status for Hospitals
$260 billion in 10-year savings

While it is true “nonprofit hospital” is an oxymoron since, in fact, there are practically no medical centers that have strong ties to their communities anymore, it is also true that eliminating nonprofit status is likely to accelerate the closure of even more hospitals in rural and other medically underserved areas. If hospitals have to scrape up tax money on top of all their other operating expenses, they become prime targets for takeovers by private equity groups. Those new owners will have a marked distaste for treating Medicaid and Medicare patients.

• Eliminate Head of Household Filing Status
$192 billion in 10-year savings

Okay! It’s on this front that Trump’s all-out war on low-income people who do not conform to some 1950s ideal of domesticity is most evident. This one is the biggie.

The head of household filing status confers two main tax benefits: a larger standard deduction and a preferential tax rate. Thirteen percent of all taxpayers use this filing status, and 76% of these taxpayers are single women with children. A disproportionate share of them—sorry, I don’t have precise numbers—are people of color.

Eliminating this filing status fits right into the Heritage Foundation Project 2025’s vision for America, which sees single parenthood as an immoral family structure. And I quote: “It’s time for policymakers to elevate family authority, formation, and cohesion as their top priority and even use government power, including through the tax code, to restore the American family.”


• Eliminate the American Opportunity Credit/ Eliminate the Lifetime Learning Credit
$59 billion in 10-year savings/$26 billion in 10-year savings

It’s not clear to me that these credits have a positive effect on the rate of higher education, and it is true that these credits are among the most misused tax credits—though whether that’s due to out-and-out fraud or honest mistakes in applying the rather Byzantine calculation formula, I do not know. There is an income cap on eligibility, so it is a credit that chiefly benefits upper-middle-income families whose decision to send their kids to college probably isn’t related to tax benefits.

But these tax credits do comprise a significant portion of non-loan student aid.