President Donald Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBB) passed the Senate by a narrow margin Tuesday and returned to the House, where it awaits final approval. The stakes of enacting the legislation could not be higher. 

To be sure, the legislation has flaws in its current version. The Senate’s modifications in particular have made the bill significantly more expensive and less conservative than many had hoped. For example, as it stands the OBBB includes a five-year $40,000 SALT deduction that forces red states to subsidize the blue state model, as well as parts of President Joe Biden’s green energy boondoggle. 

But all defects considered, the OBBB will still be a boon for America. It promises to make permanent Trump’s successful 2017 tax cuts for millions of Americans, and in turn, unleash massive economic growth. 

The White House has been clear on this point, but congressional Republicans are still struggling with their own messaging on the legislation, as recent polling shows a small majority of voters oppose the bill. 

Part of the perception problem could be that many Americans won’t realize what they had until it’s gone, according to Cori Huston, an income tax preparer of 37 years based in Wisconsin. 

Huston has witnessed firsthand how hardworking Americans tune out the minutiae of the complicated tax code and the way that federal legislation can change their tax obligations. Instead, most Americans understandably care most about what their refund will be at the end of tax season, while missing the fine print of what they gave to Uncle Sam out of their pay stubs in the first place. 

“It’ll be less money in your pocket” if the bill fails, Huston told IW Features. “You will be giving more money to the government in taxes. The everyday American does benefit from these tax cuts. The point is that the more people feel confident about the money they’re going to be getting or the money they have coming in, the more they’re going to potentially spend or build or move or grow or buy a house. When these tax cuts expire, you are going to feel it.”

Huston said her company, which she started with her mom, has 1,900 mostly average, working-class clients a year. She often has to tailor her services to what they’re willing to listen to, which tends to be the chunk of cash the government returns back to them after they file their taxes, she said. Too many fail to see their taxes for what they really are, she added: an interest-free loan to the government to fund its ever-expanding list of programs and projects. 

But Huston has tried to promote financial literacy to her customers, especially as the tax cuts in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act are set to expire at the end of 2025. She’s done presentations on these tax benefits for taxpayers of all types— from single filers to families to business owners, showing them the difference in tax benefits in the year before 2017 and after. 

For example, the law nearly doubled the standard deduction, reducing the amount of income that is taxable and simplifying the tax filing process for millions of households. Countless small businesses and middle class Americans have benefited from this provision—even if they didn’t realize it.

“If you were self-employed, you got a 20% discount on your profits,” Huston explained. “Twenty percent of your profit was sheltered from tax. The standard deduction was doubled. So for people who have paid off houses or retirees, you get access to deductions that were doubled. So that was a benefit.”

A business owner herself, Huston saw how the 2017 law helped small businesses thrive. She used to own a franchise of Merry Maids, a national cleaning company, and said that the TCJA’s bonus depreciation provision in particular helped her location get off the ground. Bonus depreciation allowed businesses to deduct 100% of the cost of eligible new and used assets (like machinery and equipment) in the year they were placed in service from 2018 through 2022.

One technical flaw with the 2017 tax cuts, however, is that they changed the withholding tables for reporting income to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Given that the IRS was withholding less from people, the amount that many Americans received in refunds was lower.  

“They gave them more in their pockets in small incremental amounts that they didn’t always recognize,” Huston said, which might have led to the impression that the tax cuts didn’t translate to more money in Americans’ pockets. “So I think that if they had kept the withholding the same and given the tax cuts, the changes would have been obvious and people would have remembered.”

But either way, the tax brackets changed with the 2017 law, reducing the statutory tax rates for most income brackets.

“I try to tell my clients, ‘You know the tax brackets were 10, 15, 25, 28,’” Huston said. “‘Now they’re 10, 12, 22, 24. That is a significant difference for you to pay plus the tax brackets are wider. You stay in 12 longer. You stay in a lower tax bracket longer.’”

The TCJA also doubled the Child Tax Credit from $1,000 to 2,000, delivering financial support for families. The OBBB as of now also contains provisions to increase the Child Tax Credit from $2,000 to $2,200.

Another important change included in the OBBB is a new tax deduction for seniors, which is part of Trump’s campaign pledge to eliminate taxes on Social Security income. 

From Huston’s experience in the field, she’s seen that seniors get a high tax hit relative to their fixed income. When their Social Security gets taxed, it’s a big setback for them, she said. 

“Because that’s a lot of their source of income and it can be up to 85% taxable,” Huston added. “A lot of my senior people are in the same tax bracket as they were when they were working. When Social Security is taxed, it’s taxed at a very low rate, meaning that your Social Security becomes taxable very quickly. So you put all this money away when you were working, and now you’re retired so you pulled all this money out—that means all the Social Security which you never got becomes taxable.”

Under the OBBB, the vast majority of senior citizens — 88% of all seniors who receive Social Security — will pay no tax on their Social Security benefits, according to an analysis from the Council of Economic Advisers cited by the White House. 

“I know that [the 2017 tax cuts] were everyday American tax cuts and I know that it will be an everyday American tax hike [if the bill isn’t passed],” Huston said. 

The government is just “going to take more from you, more of your cash flow, more of your current income in order to pay that higher tax,” she added.

Huston is right. The 2017 tax cuts were a major boost at the microeconomic level and promise to be again if they’re extended. At the macroeconomic level, they also stimulated the economy overall, leading to increased demand for labor and, subsequently, higher wages. 

Taxes are a learning curve for most Americans; the system almost seems convoluted by design. But Huston’s message to her clients and the voting public is simple: understand what you’re paying into the system, and how the “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act,” which hopefully is set to head to the president’s desk this week, will preserve the benefits they might not have even realized they had.