Gastonia, NC Correspondent — We can stop arguing about how it should be written. It was signed this morning, and the answer is both.

The core is permanent. The rates and brackets don’t expire, and full expensing was made permanent. Those are real and they’re what a lender models.

Everything the campaign was actually about is fused. Tips, overtime, the raised deduction cap — all of them expire inside this presidential term or shortly after. The provisions with the most political salience have the shortest lives.

That’s a code with a carnival stapled to it. The carnival is the 2029 reunion tour, scheduled on purpose.

Owatonna, MN Correspondent — Farmers and main-street books wanted to know the rule in 2028 without hiring a priest. On the core, they now do, and that’s a genuine improvement over living cycle to cycle.

What I’d note is what happens at the other end. The energy credits from the last Congress get phased out faster than their own schedules, which means a project financed against a ten-year credit is now financed against a shorter one.

So permanence arrived for one set of taxpayers and was withdrawn from another, in the same bill. That’s not a code. That’s an allocation, and the next majority will make the opposite allocation.

Bismarck, ND Correspondent — Permanent rates and permanent expensing are what I asked for and they’re in there.

A lender can now model after-tax cash flow in 2028 without guessing about the core, which is worth a great deal in farm credit.

The rest of it — the temporary items — a banker treats as an assumption rather than a rule, exactly as before. So the file got shorter. It didn’t get clean.

Dayton, OH Correspondent — A shop quotes a job on next year’s tax, and on the core it can now quote past 2028. That’s the win and I’ll take it.

The manufacturing complaint is the energy side. We had projects underwritten on credits that are now on an accelerated wind-down, and rewriting an investment case mid-construction is a real cost that doesn’t appear in anybody’s score.

Predictability is the product. This bill delivered it on one page and removed it from another.

Tyler, Texas Correspondent — Energy and fabrication here lived through credit seasons, and this bill ends some seasons and starts others.

Permanence on the core is what changes behavior at a well site. That part is right and I’d have taken it alone.

What I said before this passed still holds and now it’s a prediction with a date on it. The tips and overtime provisions expire in 2028, which means the 2028 campaign will be about extending them, which means they were designed as a campaign asset rather than as tax policy. Everybody in the room knew that when they voted.

Jacksonville, FL Correspondent — Ports quote contracts past 2030, and now half the code supports that and half doesn’t.

The deduction cap arrangement is the clearest example — raised for five years and then reverting. That is a provision written to be renegotiated, and the renegotiation is already on the calendar.

Rates are visible. The rest is fog, and fog comes back.

Long Island, NY Correspondent — I’d score this against the test I gave before it passed, which was whether a board could build a five-year model from the statute.

Partly. The rate structure, brackets, and expensing are durable and that’s a real accomplishment after eight years of temporary law.

But the drafting pattern is the one I warned about, and it’s worse than a sunset. Several provisions have different effective dates, different expiration dates, and phase-outs that don’t align with each other. A taxpayer with tips income, a state tax deduction, and a business is now operating under three different clocks.

The score is the other half. The published estimate has this adding something over three trillion to deficits across the decade, and the debt limit was raised by five trillion in the same instrument.

So the durability question and the fiscal question were answered in opposite directions. The code got more stable. The path got worse. Both of those are now facts rather than forecasts.

Cheyenne, WY Correspondent — Core permanent, extras fused. That’s the summary. I do books. The permanent part I can treat as a rule. The rest is still an assumption with an expiry, which is what I said before and what I’ll be saying again in 2028.