"We the people" will receive the most substantial tax cut since 1986, when President Ronald Reagan signed a bill that unleashed one of history's longest and most broad-based economic expansions.

Holiday gifts cannot get better than the tax bill the House and Senate will finalize this week, assuming assurances by the majority in Congress and President Donald Trump play out.

"On February 1st, look at your paychecks," said Rep. Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. "You'll see the tax relief we delivered today. And on April 15 you will, for the last time, file your taxes under this horrible, terrible tax code that we're putting behind us."

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan declared "we're giving the people their money back." Ryan promised the typical family making the median household income will get $2,059 in tax relief next year alone.

"For all those millions of men and women in America who are living paycheck to paycheck, who are struggling to get ahead, help is on the way," Ryan said.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said "for every American who fought for a pay raise, for every parent, for everyone who ever dreamed of opening a small business or being an entrepreneur, I want you to know we heard you,"

Entrenched political division made this bill sadly partisan, unlike Reagan's bipartisan reform.

The bill reduces rates for five of seven tax brackets, giving broad-based relief for most American households and small businesses. It is pro family, doubling the child tax credit. It substantially raises standard deductions for individuals, heads of households and couples.

The bill eliminates the Affordable Care Act mandate, a tax so burdensome about 36 million Americans refused to pay it or chose a punitive penalty instead.

The cornerstone of the bill slashes the top corporate rate from 35 percent to 21. This reduction helps every American, regardless of economic standing.

Corporations are the primary source of wealth to distribute through wages, charity, government aid and more. President Barack Obama advocated reducing the corporate rate from 35 to 28 in 2012, knowing it harmed our economy, but did not garner adequate congressional support.

American corporations pay a tax rate about 10 points higher than competitors in other developed countries. As such, they are not cost-competitive. They ship jobs and currency overseas to avoid excessive taxation. Corporations that produce stateside pass along costs associated with income taxes, like other overhead, in prices charged to consumers.

"A corporate rate of 35 percent is not intended to reel in revenue," said economic historian, professor and author Brian Domitrovic, who earned his doctorate from Harvard. "If that is the intent, it has done very poorly throughout the 2000s at bringing in revenue. In nominal terms, we're at about the level of corporate tax receipts as in 2007, not even adjusting for inflation. That's lame. It is doing nothing in terms of alleviating the rest of the tax burden."

Politicians have ratcheted up corporate taxes since the early 1990s, structuring loopholes to appease corporate lobbyists. Think of corporate tax breaks as a special currency only a few can manipulate. The costs fall on consumers with the velocity of hailstones.

"The real function of a corporate tax hike is to confer value to tax exemptions," Domitrovic said. "The rising corporate tax rate has rewritten business plans all over the Fortune 500, in such manner as to game the 35 percent rate. All it means for the economy is slower economic growth and fewer wages. There is no school of economics that says the wage earner and consumer don't pay the corporate tax. The wage earner and consumer pay all of the corporate tax."

Contending with the highest tax rate in the world, some corporations climb the Fortune 500 by spending more energy on sure-bet tax maneuvers than the potential rewards from investments in ideas and people to pursue them. Boeing, General Electric, Verizon and 23 other Fortune 500s paid almost no federal income taxes for the past decade.

"The classic example is General Electric, under former leadership of Jeff Immelt," Domitrovic said. "GE was paying an astonishingly low portion of cash flow in taxation, and that's because it so successfully navigated the 80,000-page tax code. The energies of GE were devoted to understanding and exploiting the tax code, as opposed to producing great new products in this era of the tech revolution and all the unbelievable opportunities in the real economy."

"The 35 percent corporate tax rate is beloved by the Fortune 500. The Fortune 500 is the Fortune 500 because of the 35 percent tax rate."

With a 21 percent corporate rate, we may see substantial disruption of today's Fortune 500. Rather than chasing tax abatement, more companies could return to seeking profits through domestic innovation and production. After Reagan slashed the corporate rate, upstarts replaced nearly 80 percent of the Fortune 500 by the turn of the century.

"There will be a lot of churning, and most of that will result, net, in tremendous levels of new employment and prosperity," Domitrovic said.

Only time and results will reveal the true upsides and downsides of the tax plan. Heading into 2018, we hope and pray these tax cuts bring new hope, opportunity and more income to Americans from all walks of life.

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