Trump tax plan

A provision in the tax bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives would only intensify the housing crunch in the nation’s fourth-largest city—and others across the U.S.—by crippling affordable housing construction.

As the tax debate hits its latest crescendo in Washington, TV ads trying to influence the biggest rewrite of the code in three decades have increasingly targeted states with wavering Republicans, including Wisconsin and Maine.

The Treasury Department’s inspector general is examining whether political considerations interfered with Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s promised analysis of the Republican tax proposal.

The Senate held a round of marathon votes Friday and ultimately passed the bill overnight. Here are the latest developments, updated throughout the day.

As if the Republican tax reform plan wasn’t bad enough already for taxpayers, the latest scheme to win over more votes of a precarious Senate majority involves adding a “trigger” to raise certain taxes if there isn’t enough economic growth to cover the $1.4 trillion cost of the bill, though the Senate's parliamentarian appears to have just shot down that proposal.

A push by some Republican senators to ward off future deficits by tucking a potential corporate tax increase into their tax-overhaul bill would set up a kind of economic booby trap—putting the GOP’s much-desired growth at risk, according to a half-dozen economists, lobbyists and tax experts.

The tax reform bills passed by the House, and soon to be passed by the Senate, have many similarities. And you can count on measures that are the same in both bills to end up in the final version to be signed by the President.

In the rush to borrow before the Republican tax bill reshapes the debt market, states and municipalities are paying up. The biggest spree of debt issuance in more than a decade has pushed up borrowing costs and eroded returns in the $3.8 trillion municipal-debt market.

Outgoing Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said the central bank would welcome and support a faster expansion of the economy stemming from changes in the tax code, provided it was the right kind of growth.

Some Republican senators hate that they’re about to vote for a bill that cuts individual tax rates before raising them back in a few years.