Yesterday, the Joint Committee on Taxation released an updated score on the "chairman's mark" of the FSC/ETI bill. (See http://www.house.gov/jct/x-68-04r.pdf.)
Overall, the score raises $238 million in revenue, although there are several gimmicks which are used to keep the costs down (see http://www.cbpp.org/10-4-04tax.htm.)
- The repeal of the exclusion of ETI will cost $57.7 billion.
- Under title VIII, there are revenue provisions to close loopholes and raise some fees, which raise a total of $81.7 billion
The revenue enhancements from the repeal of the ETI regime and the loophole closings thus total $139.4 billion. (Note that this total would come close to paying for the $146 billion price tag of the "middle class" tax cut.)
Rather than using this money to finance cuts in other areas of the tax code or pay off the debt, the bill gives over $139 billion in additional tax cuts primarily to businesses.
