Eh? Take a Married couple, no kids, $70,000 AGI, all W2. If they take a standard deduction today, that's $12,200 for the deduction ($500 more with kids) + $8,

Eh? Take a Married couple, no kids, $70,000 AGI, all W2. If they take a standard deduction today, that's $12,200 for the deduction ($500 more with kids) + $8,100 in exemptions, so their taxable income is $49,700. At current tax rates that's $7,198. Even if they itemized at the new proposed standard deduction of $24,400 (!!! One-third of their gross income, highly unlikely), that's a tax bill of $4,693. Add in 2 kids ($8,100 more in exemptions) and their tax bill becomes $2,208 ($4,288 - 2 $1,000 child tax credits) Under the proposed plan, same people: $70,000 minus $24,400 standard deduction = $45,600 taxable income, that's $5,472 in taxes, minus $600 family tax credit, for a tax bill of $4,872. So net savings of $2,326 vs. standard deduction and a slight increase of $177 vs an itemized deduction of similar size to the new proposed standard. The GOP plan calls for an increase in the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000. If we do the same, we see that the two kids will reduce their total tax bill to $872, an improvement over both prior scenarios. (Again ... $872 out of $70,000 AGI.) And Marco Rubio's amendment is asking to make the child tax credit refundable against payroll taxes (so instead of just paying $0 if you were in the net negative you'd actually get the overage back.) So changing the couples' income to $40,000: * Current SD, no kids = $1,948 * $24,400 Itemized Deduction, no kids = $750 * New SD, no kids = $1,272 * Current Standard Deduction, 2 kids = $0 * New SD, 2 kids = $0 * New SD, 2 kids, Rubio amendment = you get $2,728 back from the government