Paulsen Media - December, 2017
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Published in the StarTribune on December 20, 2017.
Letter: Retiree will pay $58 more under new tax plan. As a retiree, I can easily calculate my taxes under the new plan, and in my case I will pay $58 more than in the past. This is due to not being able to deduct local taxes, which are $3,000 more than the new limit, thus I have to use the standard deduction and my taxable income is now $10,000 more than in previous years. By the way, the highly touted standard deduction of $24,000 for a family is really only $15,900, because the $8,100 personal exemption for a family has been eliminated in the new plan. I would encourage everyone to estimate their taxes and see if they think this is a break for the middle class. Rick Windham, Edina |
Published in the StarTribune on December 20, 2017.
Letter: Paulsen voted to slash the orphan drug research credit. The Dec. 19 article “Tax plan could be dramatic in Minn.” talked about how the rush to pass the law has made it hard to figure out what’s in it. One example of such a poorly understood consequence: the effect of the law on people with rare diseases. The orphan drug research credit reduces the costs of doing research on treatments that help small populations. Since the majority of drugs don’t make it through clinical trials, companies may have to do 10 studies to find one working drug to help a few thousand people. Without a substantial tax incentive, the cost of doing clinical studies can be too high for companies to recoup without huge patient populations to target. My kids have a rare genetic disease. My congressman, Erik Paulsen, sat across a table from me in September and told me he supported the Orphan Drug Act and medical research for rare diseases. But he voted in favor of the House version of the tax bill, which would have eliminated that credit entirely. And the final version still cuts the credit in half. Rare diseases are rare individually, but there are a lot of them and a lot of people suffering from conditions that still don’t have good treatments. It is a shame that a change that will make it harder to find cures is getting passed under cover of “tax reform” by politicians who are not being honest about what they are doing. Mary Salit, Plymouth http://www.startribune.com/readers-write-tax-bill-sen-al-franken-super-bowl-volunteers-road-and-pedestrian-safety/465297963/
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