As tax experts analyze congressional tax-cut bills in depth — something Republican tax-cutters haven't bothered to do — they are discovering glitches and loopholes that will make them costlier than anticipated and may punish some of the very people they were intended to reward.

"The more you read, the more you go: Holy crap, what's this?" Gregory F. Jenner, a former top tax policy expert in the George W. Bush administration, told Politico. "We will be dealing with unintended consequences for months to come because the bill is moving too fast."

Senate and House conferees have finally reconciled their versions of the bill with the goal of getting it to President Donald Trump for his signature before Christmas — an artificial and arbitrary deadline. They're finding that they baked in so many problems, sorting them out is nearly impossible.

Consider one example reported over the weekend by The Wall Street Journal:

Some wealthy — but not super-wealthy — business owners earning around $615,000 a year could find themselves paying $105 in taxes on every additional $100 they earn. Once they pass the point where tax breaks for lower-income earners phase out, and before they get to the super-rich category where lower income breaks aren't a factor, marginal tax rates (levied on earnings beyond a certain point) exceed 100 percent under the Senate tax bill.

So much for the incentive to work harder allegedly created by lowering taxes.

Or consider this analysis, by 13 independent tax scholars: "The complex rules proposed in the House and Senate bills will allow new tax games and planning opportunities for well-advised taxpayers, which will result in unanticipated consequences and costs. These costs may not currently be fully reflected in official estimates already showing the bills adding over $1 trillion to the deficit in the coming decade."

Among the loopholes spotted in the "tax games" paper:

—Investors will stash money in corporations, taking advantage of the new top 20 percent corporate tax rate instead of taking dividends and seeing them taxed at individual rates.

—Lawyers and other professionals can be expected to incorporate as pass-through corporations for new special tax treatment. Every law firm associate can be made a junior partner, if only in name, to qualify for lower business-income rates.

—One of the biggest ways the bills pay for their tax breaks is by eliminating the deductibility of state and local taxes from federal tax bills. States can be expected to create payroll taxes instead (still deductible by corporations) to maintain revenue while substituting higher property taxes (still deductible up to $10,000) for no-longer-deductible sales and income taxes.

All of these games and glitches further tilt the advantages to the wealthy at the expense of the middle class. Instead of reconciling the bills, negotiators should throw them out and start from scratch.

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