Tuesday was Tax Day across the country. LaGrange and Troup County residents met the annual tax deadline with the rest of America for the final time under the now-former tax code. 

The regulations and changes made to the former tax code in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which became law in January of 2018, will be the standard moving forward. 

U.S. Representative Drew Ferguson, who represents Georgia’s 3rd congressional district, believes the newly-minted Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will positively affect the economic future of LaGrange and Troup County. 

“The families in Troup County are seeing the benefits directly in their paychecks,” Ferguson said in a phone interview. “They are seeing better job opportunities, and wages are rising across the area, which is good for everybody in Troup County. We consistently see businesses giving bonuses or pay raises to their employees, we see them making investments in their facilities. We think it has helped the local economy.”

The new tax law will make changes to tax brackets, standard deductions and exemptions, child tax credit, homeownership tax breaks and a host of other areas as well. 

While the bill has been ratified in an attempt to streamline the notoriously convoluted and challenging American tax code and to reduce taxes on a large swath of the American people, some projections remain ominous in light of the news. 

Per the Congressional Budget Office, the new tax law will lead to a further ballooning of the national debt, with analysis that speculates the national debt will match the country’s GDP by 2028. 

Ferguson counters this speculation, maintaining the CBO assumes a 1.5 percent increase in the GDP year-over-year while the country has seen a 3 percent increase within the last year. 

“Here’s the thing we have to talk about,” Ferguson said. “The driver of the debt is the unrestrained growth in our entitlement programs. Real debt growth comes from able-body adults who are no longer in the work force who are incentivized to stay at home. We need everybody to come to work in order to solve this problem.” 

The economy of Troup County is growing, and Ferguson’s hope is the new tax law will aide in that continued development.