FA Magazine July/August 2021 | Page 20

THE BIG PICTURE

Joseph B . Darby III

Bracing For Biden

The game begins and the plot thickens .

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HERE ’ S AN IRONCLAD RULE FOR CLIENTS TRYING TO follow proposed federal tax legislation moving through Congress : Don ’ t !
Most proposed tax legislation never makes it past the congressional cutting room floor , and whatever does survive the trim and tuck of the tax committee surgeons is often wildly at variance from the original . It therefore makes little sense to devote time , effort and memory cells to learning information that has a high likelihood of becoming totally irrelevant . After all , your brain is already clogged with useless information about Henry VIII ’ s six wives and the War of the Spanish Succession . At least that stuff might one day show up as a question on Jeopardy ! But never-passed tax legislation is as valueless as your old BlackBerry charger , the key to your college dorm room , or the players that the Boston Red Sox got in exchange for trading Andrew Benintendi .
The far better approach — tried and true — is to wait until faux tax legislation becomes actual tax legislation , at which time you can pick up the new law , read it studiously , inhale deeply all the new ideas and then exhale them out in the next breath to clients and friends .
So why write this article about the pending federal tax proposals from the Biden administration ? For one thing , it is just about the only thing that anyone is talking about . For another , there is probably still time to do something about it . In homage to the Titanic , you may want to consider a change in navigation before the icebergs appear .
Biden Income Tax Proposals
The White House has advanced an ambitious agenda of income tax changes targeted at U . S . corporations and individ-
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