Accountancy Slice

North America

President Donald Trump's tax-and-spending legislation was passed by the Senate on Tuesday, with a 50-50 deadlock decided with a tiebreaking vote from Vice President JD Vance, enabling the extension of trillions in tax cuts from Mr. Trump's first term and new measures like eliminating income taxes on tips. The bill proposes cuts of about $1tn to Medicaid and other health programmes, potentially leaving nearly 12m people without healthcare coverage. It also raises the debt ceiling by $5tn. "There will be a day that conservatives will rue the fact that some of them actually voted for this," remarked Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). The legislation must now pass the House, where it faces opposition. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC), a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, told reporters about an hour after the Senate bill’s passage Tuesday that he wouldn’t vote to move the president’s tax bill out of the House Rules Committee, adding: “Our bill has been completely changed - from the IRA credits to the deficit. This bill’s a nonstarter. We want to do this, but this bill doesn’t do what the president wants it to do." Should House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) fail to get enough members to back it, the House and Senate will have to confer to reconcile the differences, likely going past Mr. Trump's deadline of July 4th to pass the bill.