• This week’s market alert covers the new Big Beautiful Bill (BBB) and what it could mean for your retirement planning and taxes.
• Ken Moraif and Sharla Bartley break down the key provisions that are likely to impact retirees, pre-retirees, and those over 50.
• Seniors 65 and older now receive an enhanced standard deduction $6,000 per person or $12,000 for married couples which could make Social Security income tax-free for many.
• The state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap increases from $10,000 to $40,000 for most filers, helping those in high-tax states or with high property taxes.
• There’s now a charitable deduction available for non-itemizers, meaning you can deduct charitable contributions even if you don’t itemize your taxes.
• A new automobile loan interest deduction allows up to $10,000 in interest deductions on cars purchased between 2025–2028 cars must be new and substantially assembled in the U.S.
• The estate and gift tax exemption becomes permanent, allowing individuals to pass up to $15 million and married couples up to $30 million to heirs without estate tax.
• Tax brackets and higher standard deductions introduced in 2017 are now permanent no more sunsetting back to pre-2017 rules.
• Trump Accounts are introduced: new tax-advantaged savings accounts for babies born after January 1, 2026, seeded with $1,000 from the government and allowing up to $5,000 in contributions from individuals and potentially employers.
• Energy tax credits—such as those for solar panels and electric vehicles—are being eliminated. Act now if you’re planning an energy-efficient purchase.
• Ken emphasizes that while some of these provisions require more clarity, now is a smart time to review your tax strategy with your retirement planner or tax professional.
• At Retirement Planners of America, our Invest and Protect Strategy is designed to help protect clients from major market downturns, while also planning around tax and legislative changes like these.
• If you have questions regarding these changes and how they may impact your current financial plans, please do not hesitate to reach out to your RPOA financial planner. We are here to help!
Transcript:
Ken Moraif
Hello everyone, and welcome to our market alert video for today, which is Thursday, July 10. And we have a very special market alert video for you, because we’re going to go through the big beautiful bill, the one Big Beautiful Bill, the BBB. And our goal for this video is to kind of go through the parts of it that we thought would be pertinent for you from a retirement planning standpoint, from those perspectives. And of course, I want to preface all of this conversation with saying that it’s all new. So we’re wading through it. It’s a big bill as it as it is so named, and so this is what we know right now. Is to the best of our knowledge, we’ll have more clarity as more questions are being asked and the government comes back and tells us more about what the provisions are. So all of that will become better and better, but this is the state of our art right now. So first of all, I want to say hi to everybody, welcome. And I hope this video finds you healthy, wealthy and wise, and all of you in SCWPer nation, I hope you are out there SCWPering Your little tails off, and that all is well with you. So I want to bring Sharla Bartley, to join me. So, Sharla, if you could join the conversation. Hi, Sharla, how are you?
Sharla Bartley
Hello. I’m fantastic. Thank you. Ken, yeah.
Ken Moraif
So I think, as you guys can tell, we are not in the studio. Both of us are off, off campus, if you will, but the content is what’s really important. And so Sharla, you’ve been wading through all this stuff. It’s a lot, isn’t it? It is, Ken
Sharla Bartley
it is a lot.
Ken Moraif
Yeah. And so there are provisions all over the map, but what we try to do for you, ladies and gentlemen, is kind of focus it in on the parts that we think are pertinent. So I think, Sharla, you have a slide presentation for us that we can kind of walk through. So if you want to start that now, that would be great.
Sharla Bartley
I do. I do again, as Ken mentioned, the the one of the bees in the OBB is big, and boy, is it big. There was a lot of material to go through. But I was very fortunate to have connections and colleagues that spent their holiday weekend slogging through all of this and getting it into some sort of form that could be presented, and that they made that available for us in the profession to kind of catch up on this week. So what I’ve done is I’ve taken the the highlights and the things that I think will be most applicable to our clients, and these are going to be the high priority things I think that will really hit with our group, with our watchers today. So the the bill is broken down into quite a few individual provisions, quite a few business provisions, and some energy provisions. And this is just on the tax part of it. I’m not going to speak to any to speak to anything else that’s in the bill. I’m going to stay in my lane today, which is tax. All right, so let’s get into it. Here are our individual provisions. I think that are the heavy hitters. Ken, I think that these will be most interesting to our watchers today. So we have enhanced standard deductions available to our seniors, age 65 and older, we have a state and local tax cap increase that is substantial. It’s going to be good for our filers, for our clients, there’s going to be a charitable deduction for non itemizers, so people who take the standard deduction, there is now a deduction available for car loan interest, and that, of course, big on people’s mind. The estate and gift tax exemption was increased and made permanent, so we don’t have to worry about that provision. Sun setting, seniors 65 and older now have an enhanced itemized deduction, so every senior gets an additional $6,000 added to their standard deduction. Now for a married couple, that’s a combined $12,000 so we were already doing this before, but we have increased it. So it’s up from 1950 for single filers and that from 3050 each for married filers. So this is a substantial jump for our filers that are going to have an additional amount of their income shielded from taxation. So this is for taxpayers 65 years of age or older. It is available for years 2025, through 2028, and it does phase out. So something to keep in mind is that there is a phase out on it for individuals within a taxable income greater than 75,000 or married filers with an taxable income over 150,000
Ken Moraif
this is, you know, one of the things that the. People were looking for was that my Social Security benefits are going to be tax free. And you know, I think the statistic that I saw was that something on the order of 65 or 66% of all seniors in this country don’t pay tax on their social security but because of this that we’re seeing on the screen right now, that number is going to go to 88% of seniors are not going to pay tax, so the no tax on Social Security didn’t quite happen, but the vast majority of people now will not pay tax. And the reason for that, the actual way that they calculate if your Social Security benefits are going to be taxed did not change, right? The provisional income that we’ve talked about in other times hasn’t that. That hasn’t changed, and the taxability of Social Security hasn’t changed. What has changed, though, is that now, because you have a $6,000 enhanced standard deduction that will potentially make your Social Security benefits tax free. Can you expand on that? Sharla,
Sharla Bartley
you’re on the money. The computation for how much of your Social Security income goes into the taxable bucket hasn’t changed. However, when you get a little further, if you’re just following the tax return, if you get a little further down the standard deduction amount increased. So even if more of your Social Security income is going into the taxable bucket, this is another mechanism to protect that income from
Ken Moraif
taxation. Okay, so one of the things that is possible is that with proper planning and creative use of this, that someone may be able to avoid paying any tax under Social Security. So anybody who’s watching this, if you’re interested in pursuing that line, and keep in mind that if your income is over 75,000 if you’re single, and 150 if you’re married, then you know it phases out. But if you’re under that, then this might be something that you’d want to talk with. Your retirement planner, Sharla is our tax our tax professional. And all clients have access to Sharla, and we encourage you to have access to Sharla. She can help you with your tax returns. She can help you with your income tax planning. It’s part of the services that we provide, and so this would be something that we might want to look at is, how do we reduce the taxes or eliminate them on our Social Security given this, this provision, right?
Sharla Bartley
Yes, this is a great exercise this year. I see this at least for the next three to four years, and so this is something that I believe that most of our watchers should probably explore. So this is a, this is a great
Ken Moraif
resource, awesome. Okay, so what’s next?
Sharla Bartley
This is something for all of us, right? So in the tax cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 your taxes that you could deduct on your schedule, a if you itemize your deductions, was limited to $10,000 that may not sound like maybe it’s enough, but it’s not if you live in a state like California, Arizona, Oklahoma, these states all have state income tax, and you could easily have this much, and then if you had more than 10,000 that additional amount gets disallowed forever. It’s not rolled forward, it’s not carried forward, it’s disallowed forever. In the state of Texas, we do not have income tax, but we have outrageous property taxes, and you could easily pay more than $10,000 in property taxes for a fairly modest residence. So what this did is this addressed this problem, because this is something that is impacting Americans from many states. And what this does is it takes the $10,000 cap and it makes it now $40,000 if your income is under certain amounts. So it’s up from 10,000 to 40,000 now it doesn’t matter what your filing status is. This is one of the few things that you’re not penalized for, for being a single filer. It is available for years 2025, through 2028, and it indexes each year. So each year, that means that it’s going to index to keep up, maybe with the cost of living, sort of hopefully right. It does phase out at income levels greater than 500,000 and basically it’s never going to go below the $10,000 so only the enhancement gets phased out, and then it’s completely phased out at taxable income over 600,000
Ken Moraif
Okay, so for most of our clients and squibbers and people that are viewing our message today, this is a significant benefit if you live in states where you have state income tax, and many of our people do, so again, this is something to be looking for that potentially save you a good amount of taxes, right? Yes,
Sharla Bartley
and there’s a little waterfall effect, just a little tax planning tip, if I may, we call this waterfall the. Waterfall effect when you’re doing tax planning, because sometimes when you get to take advantage of one thing, it pushes you into getting to take advantage of something else. So if your taxes, your state and local sales, income, property, whatever you’ve got that says state and local tax if it adds up to more than $10,000 now you can take more, which may push you over the amount to be able to itemize, and once you’re over the amount to be able to itemize, then all of the other things that you make your charitable contributions, all of those other things that you’ve been collecting and doing throughout the year may be beneficial to you.
Ken Moraif
Wow, okay, I know, right? Some, some, some additional add on effects from right, some planning communities Love it, love it, love it. Okay, what’s next? All right,
Sharla Bartley
now there’s going to be something new. We had something similar to this. I don’t recall the exact year, but this is an above the line charitable contribution. So above the line is the term that we use for anything that is before you get to your itemized deduction. So this is a charitable contribution deduction that you can take advantage of, and you do not have to itemize your deductions. So say you don’t have enough charitable contributions or medical or a tax or whatever, you don’t have enough to exceed your standard deduction, which is like 16,000 or 30,000 or whatever. Don’t have enough, you can still have a little bit of your charitable contributions to be deducted above the line. So that’s really cool. Great
Ken Moraif
thing. Yeah, that’s neat. Alright, so we can, we can deduct even more of our charitable deductions for so that’s a lot of good news here. So what’s next? Okay, so
Sharla Bartley
this is one. We’re going to need a lot more guidance on this one, but I am very excited about it, because we all drive, we all like to drive nice cars, right? There is now a deduction available for automobile interest, okay? And I’ve said that sentence, and that’s really about the amount of guidance that we have on this. You can deduct up to $10,000 for interest that you pay on an automobile note for a new automobile that originates in 2025 through 2028 the automobile has to have been substantially assembled in the in the USA. And I’ve been talking to people about this, and I’m going to tell you some of the questions I get. But what if I bought a car in 2024 can I get my interest deduction? No, the point is 2025
Ken Moraif
so yes. So it has to be a new car. You can’t buy a used car, right? And it has to be assembled in the USA. But cars are that’s a difficult challenge. I guess we’re going to need more clarity on what
Sharla Bartley
you will need more clarity you are right on the money on that, Ken and because, you know, sometimes cars are assembled completely just about in another country, and then they come in and then they put a sticker on them or something, right?
Ken Moraif
So this is basically trying to encourage the purchase of cars made in the United States,
Sharla Bartley
right? That is the intent. So when you’re looking at laws like this, and you’re thinking about, how does this apply? Can I do this? Can I do that? Even though you don’t have the guidance yet, that says yes or no. You look at the intent behind it, and you know what they’re going for. They want to increase American consumers buying American made cars to bring manufacturing back into the United
Ken Moraif
States. We may want to wait until next year, right? Because it starts in 26 so if you’re thinking about buying a new car, you want to get this big deduction. People may be holding off buying any cars this year and buying them next year when they can get the deduction Right? Very interesting. Yeah, this is
Sharla Bartley
cool. Okay, anything that I wanted to point out is that there’s a little bit of ambiguity here on whether the deduction is going to be above the line or if it’s going to be part of your itemized deductions. I’m not 100% clear. I got some conflicting stuff on that. But there is some people who are saying, this is going to, again, be above the line, which is huge, which is
Ken Moraif
huge, and and probably it will, it will be, given the intent of this, right? They really want to incent people to buy American made cars. And so that would be the mat, the biggest impact, I would think, all right, boy, this feels like early Christmas, Christmas. There’s some good stuff in here. Yeah. So what’s next? Oh, estate and gift tax exemption. Alright, right?
Sharla Bartley
So Ken, now you and I both know this doesn’t apply to everybody, but very few people. It does. It does to very few people, and they are very blessed, and they have made good on what the good Lord gave them, right? But for those that it does apply to, it really brings a lot of simplicity and clarity to a situation that has been just fraught with complexity for many, many, many years. So what happened is the tax cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 increased the estate tax limits to around 12. Billion, and then it indexed up every year. The problem with that is that it was going to sunset in 2025 and go back to what it was before. So what this provision does is it makes this very clear, it’s permanent, and it’s going to index starting in 2026 so the fact, when we tell you something is permanent, it means that that legislators are not going to have to do anything for it to continue. If it sunsets, that means that legislators are going to have to gather all their political capital. They’re going to have to go this whole reconciliation everything to make this continue. So there is a lot more effort involved in the future for things that are not permanent. This is permanent. We know the estate and gift,
Ken Moraif
unless somebody so before it was, if you don’t re up it, it expires. Now it’s if you don’t cancel it, it continues forever. Let’s explain the what this is. So basically, what this means is, is that one person starting next year. Now, this year it’s around 13, 14 million, but next year, it’ll jump to 15 million. You can pass to your greedy, unwashed, undeserving heirs up to $15 million per person. So a married couple could combine and give 30 million, they can leave an inheritance of 30 million. So essentially, what they’ve done is they’ve made the estate tax and the gift tax tax free, to 99.9% of the people in this country, which is really a good thing. I think this
Sharla Bartley
is definitely something, definitely for the 99% for sure. Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay, what’s next? So those are the high priority ones, and we’re going to transition a little bit and talk about some things that I would say are a little less high priority, but are for your knowledge, and it’s high priority for someone right. This may be more applicable to people who you know, and maybe not you as you know a senior or someone approaching those senior years, but this big bill really did a lot to codify and make permanent. Some things that happened in 2017 and I spoke to that briefly a moment ago, the tax cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 took the tax brackets and just rearranged them to make them more favorable. But that was set to sunset, December 31 of 2025 so now this makes them permanent. That’s great. It makes plan, it makes my job easier. This the same thing in the tax cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 May I abbreviate that going forward the tcja 2017 it took our standard deductions. We used to have a standard deduction that was much lower. It took them and almost doubled them for every return that’s filed, and then that index is every year, right? So this increased that a little bit and made it permanent. So that’s not going to sunset the end of this year. Mm, hmm. And if you’re a tax person or you have filed your own tax we used to have personal exemptions. We stopped having them in 2017 and the tcja, but they were going to come back after 2025 they have permanently removed those they are gone forever. So instead of having a personal exemption of around $3,000 for every person on your return, we now have the larger
Ken Moraif
standard deductions. So basically, these three things are no change. They’ve just been made permanent. They they were going to go back to the way they were, right? But since 2017 these, these three things have basically been as they are. So basically they they said these will continue. So nothing to worry about here. What about the itemized deductions?
Sharla Bartley
Right? So if you are in the highest tax brackets, Lord, love you, bless you, and you itemize your deductions, you’re going to have your itemized deductions limited by some factor. But just know that if you’re in the higher tax brackets, and you have, you know, $100,000 of itemized deductions, you’re not going to get all of those. They’re going to be limited,
Ken Moraif
and I don’t always been the case, right? They’ve all Well, I think that, yes,
Sharla Bartley
but I think that there was some adjustment there.
Ken Moraif
Okay, so let’s go to the next slide. Sharla, what do we have? Trump? Okay, so this is really interesting, it is. And I think the Trump accounts, the idea behind this is that we have a problem in this country, maybe globally, and that is that people aren’t having babies, and it’s actually an existential threat to the human race that we’re not reproducing. So the Trump accounts, it appears to me, are an effort to encourage people to have babies, right,
Sharla Bartley
right? So for those who choose to partake in having babies for children that are born after one, one of 2026 the government is going to set up what is called a Trump account. It’s going to act a lot like a 529, account. The government is going to deposit $1,000 into each of these accounts and. And other individuals can also contribute to these accounts up to $5,000
Ken Moraif
so if my wife and I had a baby next year, then the the Fed and the Federal This is $1,000 for anybody that has a baby, regardless of their income, regardless of any of that? Right? Right? Okay, so, so Fay and I have a have a baby next year, which would be a scientific miracle, I think. But let’s say we did, and then on top of that, we’d have $5,000 that we could put in for this baby. So now it’s got $6,000 in this account that will grow tax free for education. That’s correct. Wow, that’s that’s terrific. And then, and then, and then, if you go to the next slide, I think you have where it can even gets better, right? That’s what, where employers can contribute as well,
Sharla Bartley
right? And I’m not 100% clear, this acts like a 529, so the contributions into the plan are not tax deductible, right? For federal some states may allow you to deduct them. I don’t know if that’s going to be the case for employer contributions. It would be a great benefit for an employer to sponsor, but I don’t know if they’re going to be deductible for the employer. So that’s something that we’ll get more guidance on.
Ken Moraif
Okay, yeah, so this one, there’s some clarity we need, but it’s very interesting. So next year, every new baby potentially could have $8,500 put into an account for them for their education. That’s terrific. That’s
Sharla Bartley
I know, but this is not one of those deals that can kind of turn into like an additional retirement for that child. These accounts have to be emptied at a certain age. Okay? So these are designed for educational expenses, basically.
Ken Moraif
And could a grandparent contribute to these? Or does it have the 5000 can be contributed?
Sharla Bartley
There’s no existing guidance. Yeah, that tells you who the individuals are. It says an individual. So this is something that we will find out more. I don’t think there’s any reason so more likely than would be if my daughter had a baby next year.
Ken Moraif
Then I could give her the $5,000 and then she could put it into the account. That might be a better plan than me doing it, but surprising opportunities there to do something for grandchildren and others. So that’s great. Okay, what’s
Sharla Bartley
next? There are a few energy provisions. Let’s just go over this at a high level. Okay, so we have had credits available to us as individuals for solar, clean vehicles, clean homes, like energy, efficient windows, doors, different things. Businesses have had some available to them. I’m going to focus really quickly on the individual provisions that might be of interest to our watchers. And basically, there’s no more energy
Ken Moraif
provisions. So if you wanted to get this so everything on that previous slide just went away. The
Sharla Bartley
word that they’re using is terminated,
Ken Moraif
okay, so everything on this slide right here was terminated. Arnold
Sharla Bartley
Schwarzenegger, so the wind and turbine, so these solar
Ken Moraif
energy. So if you’re if you’re doing a solar roof on your house, or something like that, if you’re buying an electric vehicle, all that kind of stuff terminate. I feel
Sharla Bartley
like I should clarify. You can still get these things if you want, solar panels if you want,
Ken Moraif
but you can’t get a tax benefit out of it. Yes, the
Sharla Bartley
tax benefit is not going to be there, and the tax benefit was often combined with some creative financing to make these things very appealing to the consumer.
Ken Moraif
And these have like different times, right? So summer, June 30, summer, the end of the year, there’s all kinds of things. There’s a lot of ambiguity about all of this. And so if anybody is planning on doing any of these things, they should make sure they talk to their tax professional or visit with us about it exactly, because there’s each one. It’s not like one standard rule for all of the above. So
Sharla Bartley
I tried to make a slide for it, and it was just a big mess. So just know that if it’s a soul, if it is an energy thing, for your residents or for an individual, it’s gone, you need to act fast. Okay,
Ken Moraif
very interesting overview of all of that very complicated, and I think you made it relatively easy for us to follow. I hope everybody that watched this got some benefit from it. You know, like I said, Charlotte is available. Retirement planners are available to visit with you and help you to make your decisions with regard to how you can take advantage of all the goodies that came out of this big, beautiful bill. But then also, there are some things that are going to go away, and so maybe you need to act now rather than later, to take full advantage of those. So I hope that yes, if
Sharla Bartley
they want to access tax planning or anything. Everything they would just reach out to their retirement planner, and their retirement planner will make an introduction.
Ken Moraif
Yeah, absolutely, if you want to visit with Sharla, she’s anxious and happy to visit with you, and you can access her through your retirement planners. So Sharla, thank you, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for watching as always. I hope this video find found you healthy, wealthy and wise, and we’ll talk soon.
Sharla Bartley
Thanks. Bye, everyone.
Please note: transcript has been modified after the time of recording.
Economic indicators and stock market performance cannot be predicted. Opinions expressed regarding the economy and the stock market belong solely to Ken Moraif on behalf of Retirement Planners of America and may not accurately portray actual future performance of the economy or stock market outcomes. Opinions expressed in this video is intended to be for informational purposes only and is not intended to be used as investment advice for individuals who are not clients of Retirement Planners of America. All content provided is the opinion of Ken Moraif, CEO and Founder of RPOA Advisors, Inc. (d/b/a Retirement Planners of America ) (“Retirement Planners of America”, “RPOA”). ©Copyright 2023