A major focus of the President and Congress has been tax reform. After much deliberation the House unveiled the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act which would represent the most sweeping changes to US tax rules in over 30 years. Given it is very early on and there are many competing groups fighting for their interests, there will likely be many changes before anything is passed.
However, we thought it would be helpful to provide a high level overview of the potential changes that are being considered. We don’t recommend taking any actions yet, but if a final version of the bill becomes more likely to pass we may make recommendations in order to best position and take advantage of the changing rules.
This article does a great job of summarizing many of the key changes.
| Index Performance | Oct. | YTD | Trl 1 Yr |
| US Stock (Russell 3000) | 2.18% | 15.55% | 24.93% |
| Foreign Stock (FTSE AW ex US) | 1.95% | 23.38% | 23.82% |
| Total US Bond Mkt. (BarCap Aggregate) | 0.06% | 3.20% | 0.90% |
| Short US Gov. Bonds (BarCap Gov 1-5 Yr) | -0.10% | 0.99% | 0.05% |
| Municipal Bonds (BarCap 1-10yr Muni) | 0.07% | 3.79% | 1.67% |
| Cash (ML 3Month T-Bill) | 0.09% | 0.66% | 0.72% |
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Photo courtesy Anthony Quintano.