Robert Spendlove, senior economist at Zions Bank, briefs an audience in Sandy about the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. (Photo courtesy South Valley Chamber of Commerce)
It was labeled as an “In the Know” event, but much of its discussion focused on what is unknown about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Speaker Robert Spendlove, senior economist at Zions Bank, acknowledged that much of the act and its impacts, including those on businesses, remain a mystery. Occasional polling of the crowd netted similar results.
Admittedly “not an expert in the bill,” Spendlove said he had trouble preparing for the event, presented by the South Valley Chamber of Commerce in Sandy.
“I was getting a little nervous,” he said. “I was researching and trying to find out information about it, and there isn’t a lot of information. I’ll just tell you that right now.”
That assessment was similar at a recent conference in Boise, where the National Association of State Budget Officers met and acknowledged “there’s a lot we don’t know,” he said.
To provide an overview of the OBBBA, Spendlove pulled analysis and opinions from several organizations. “It’s a real struggle,” he said. “As of today, there’s a pretty negative perception of that bill, so the Congress has not done a good job selling the bill.”
One audience member said she has come up empty trying to find fact-based analysis of the bill, instead finding “propaganda” from both sides of the political spectrum.
“And I’ll tell you, that has been my exact struggle, too,” Spendlove replied. “It was really hard to put together this slide deck and not have it be either ‘this is going to end the world’ or ‘it’s going to save us all.’”
Compounding the issue, the bill is complex and many provisions will be rolled out over a decade, resulting in some short-term impacts that may be different from its long-term effects. “Right now, state governments, business groups, we’re all … trying to figure out what’s going on and how to understand it, and this will continue for many years,” he said.
One hallmark of the bill is a federal income tax cut, to the tune of $3,743 on average in Utah, with residents of some states receiving a cut over $5,000. No U.S. counties would see federal income taxes rise. Utah also is projected to gain 9,132 jobs over time as a result of the bill, part of a 938,000-job increase nationwide.
Spendlove spelled out several ways the bill impacts various income-earners’ tax responsibilities. As for corporate taxes, they are stable at 21 percent under the bill, although the “pass-through 199A” deduction moves from 20 percent to 23 percent and becomes permanent. A member of the crowd chimed in with several details of that deduction, saying that the permanence is more important than the increase.
“Before we talked about it right now, did anyone know about this 199A? Raise your hand,” Spendlove asked the audience, with very few doing so. “Right?!” was his response. Zero hands rose during a recent event in Ogden, presented by a U.S. representative. “This is part of [why] they need to be out there, explaining this to people, talking about these kinds of things,” Spendlove said.
Another audience member, from the Small Business Administration, lauded the “unsung benefits” of the OBBBA and described the bill as “overwhelmingly positive.”
“I don’t know why everybody in this room, if you’re a small-business owner, you don’t love the One Big Beautiful Bill,” he said. “This is going to accelerate growth like you’ve never seen.”
Spendlove noted that the bill is expected to cause a surge in the national debt. It also shifts government revenue reliance from the income tax to tariffs, which are effectively a sales, or consumption, tax on Americans. Tariff revenue can offset the costs of the bill, but he noted that tariffs are “fluid.”
Among the expected beneficiaries of the bill are fossil-fuel companies, Silicon Valley investors, chipmakers, defense contractors, airlines, school choice advocates, sports team owners, manufacturers, retailers and real estate developers, he said. Expected losers include companies involved in AI and tech, electric vehicles, solar and wind energy, shipping and online retailing, plus food companies, universities and hospitals.