President Donald Trump waits for the arrival of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the White House in Washington, DC, on May 6, 2025.
Jim Watson | Afp | Getty Images
Debate for the House Republicans’ tax bill is underway — and experts are watching to see which of President Donald Trump’s priorities make the final cut.
The House Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over tax, released the full text of its portion of the bill Monday afternoon, and started to debate over provisions on Tuesday.
GOP lawmakers included several of Trump’s campaign priorities, including tax cut extensions, no tax on tips and tax-free overtime pay. Rather than cutting taxes on Social Security, the plan includes an extra $4,000 deduction for older Americans.
The early bill did not include a higher tax rate on some of the wealthiest Americans or plans to end the so-called “carried interest loophole,” which are both ideas that Trump supported.
However, the final bill could change significantly before the committee vote.
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The early version of the GOP tax bill would cost about $3.7 trillion over 10 years, according to estimates from the Joint Committee on Taxation. That’s under the Republicans’ $4.5 trillion limit, which could leave room for other priorities to be added or increased during Tuesday’s negotiations, experts say.
“It’s really important for any additional tax cuts to be paid for,” which will impact individual provisions, said Shai Akabas, vice president of economic policy for the Bipartisan Policy Center.
As the debate heats up, here are two key areas to watch.
The battle over the ‘SALT’ deduction
With a slim House Republican majority, the limit on the deduction for state and local taxes, known as SALT, has been a key issue in tax package negotiations.
Enacted via the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, or TCJA, of 2017, the current $10,000 cap will expire after 2025 without action from Congress.
The House text released Monday would boost the SALT deduction limit to $30,000 for most taxpayers. This would phase out once modified adjusted gross income exceeds $400,000.
Some lawmakers have already pushed a higher SALT deduction cap, which could still be possible with wiggle room in the budget, experts say.
Child tax credit boost
Republican lawmakers also want to expand the child tax credit, a change that was passed via a bipartisan House bill in February 2024.
TCJA temporarily increased the maximum child tax credit to $2,000 from $1,000 per child under age 17, and boosted eligibility. These changes are scheduled to sunset after 2025.
The preliminary House GOP text calls for raising the credit to $2,500 per child through 2028, as long as both parents have a Social Security number. The $1,400 refundable portion, which is available without taxes owed, would be indexed for inflation.
However, the proposal “does nothing for the 17 million children who currently don’t get the full $2,000 child tax credit because their families’ incomes are too low,” said Chuck Marr, vice president for federal tax policy for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
