Please disable your Ad Blocker to better interact with this website.

Opinion

Hey Parents: Trump’s Tax Reforms Are Really Good News For You!

It’s important to know the meaning of words – both how they are used colloquially and how they are used professionally.

Many words have multiple meanings and meanings change as the years go by.

The word “liberal” is a good example. The current colloquial understanding seems to be “a leftist”— one leaning toward socialistic values.

Another word is “credit” — as distinguished from write-off. A credit is used to satisfy a cash obligation — and is more-or-less equivalent to cash for specific uses.

Write-off is a tax deduction usually of a taxable item. For example, if you’re Tax rate is, say, 20 percent, a $2000 write-off (deduction) would reduce your taxable income by $400. So a $10,000 tax bill would, in this example, be reduced to $9600.

On the other hand, if you owe $10,000 in Federal taxes, a $2000 tax credit would reduce your taxable balance to $8000.

In the recently passed Trump tax agenda, the child tax credit was increased from $1000 to $2000. Parents with children will be getting an extra thousand dollars with which to pay their Federal tax obligations. Good news indeed!

Students often complain that they are not “good at” math or biology or psychology, etc. That’s often not true. Their difficulty is usually associated with the meaning of the words used in the various academic subjects. Often they have meanings apart from their colloquial usage – or are never used colloquially.

Thus, understanding the specialized meaning of words in a specific course — law or engineering or medicine, etc. – is the key to mastering a subject. Most of all, acquiring an intuitive feel for the meaning of specialized words is essential to professional learning of new subjects.

So memory and the acquisition and use of word meaning are often the keys to subject mastery. A good memory course early in one’s education and/or career could very well be the key to professional success.

Image: Excerpted from: CC0 Creative Commons; https://pixabay.com/en/family-kids-baby-newborn-together-457235/

William Pauwels

William A. Pauwels, Sr. was born in Jackson Michigan to a Belgian, immigrant, entrepreneurial family. Bill is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and served in executive and/or leadership positions at Thomson Industries, Inc., Dow Corning, Loctite and Sherwin-Williams. He is currently CIO of Pauwels Private Investment Practice. He's been commenting on matters political/economic/philosophical since 1980.

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *