Americans’ New Tax Rates Depend on Who They Are and What They Do

Boil down the hundreds of tax provisions in the sprawling legislation signed by President Donald Trump on July 4, and it becomes clear: The rates Americans pay will now depend less on how much money they make, and more on how they earn it, where they live and even who they are.

The new Republican-passed law is a departure from a longtime objective of many conservatives to simplify the tax code. GOP presidential candidates Steve Forbes in the 1990s and Herman Cain in the 2012 campaign famously espoused flat tax systems stripped of deductions, while Republicans’ 2017 overhaul during ...