HOUSE OVERSIGHT 026781 2. The New Deduction for Qualified Business Income of Pass Through Entities Congress also wanted to provide an income tax rate reduction for those businesses that are organized as partnerships or S corporations or which are owned by sole proprietors. In order to meet this goal, the Tax Act provides an income tax deduction for individuals and other non-corporate taxpayers equal to (i) 20 percent of their domestic "qualified business income"; plus (ii) 20 percent of any qualifying dividends from real estate investment trusts, qualifying income from publicly traded partnerships, and gain derived from sale of such publicly traded partnerships that would be treated as ordinary income. Therefore, such deduction results in an effective federal income tax rate of 29.6% on such qualifying income for a top bracket individual. The deduction does not apply to investment income (i.e., capital gains, dividends (other than certain ordinary income dividends paid by REITs), and most interest income). In addition, it does not apply to reasonable compensation income and guaranteed payments paid to the taxpayer from the business. The 20 percent of "qualified business income" deduction described in (i) above is also generally limited to the greater of either (a) 50% of the W-2 wages paid with respect to the qualified trade or business, or (b) the sum of 25% of the W-2 wages paid with respect to such business plus 2.5% of the unadjusted tax basis of all qualified business property of such business. Thus, if the partnership, S corporation or sole proprietorship does not pay "W-2 wages" and the second limitation is a minor amount or not applicable, the owner or pass through taxpayer's tax deduction would be a minor amount or zero. Unfortunately, partners or owners of certain types of professional service businesses, including financial services providers, investment managers, brokers, consultants, lawyers and accountants (and others), are not per