A PERTINENT QUESTION: Republicans are likely just a couple of days away from signing a sweeping tax bill into law, but here’s something to consider: just how much overhauling and revamping does this tax overhaul actually do?

At the very least, it seems fair to say less than previous efforts, including the 1986 reform that often gets referenced when talking about this legislation. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Republicans allowed themselves to cut taxes by $1.5 trillion over the first decade, which meant they didn’t have to be as aggressive in cutting credits and deductions.

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Exhibit A: Remember how President Donald Trump, Speaker Paul Ryan and House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said taxpayers would be able to file on a postcard when they were done? It didn’t really turn out that way, as The New York Times’ Jim Tankersley writes.

Brady tried to dispute that position, noting that the expanded standard deduction would greatly reduce the number of taxpayers using itemized deductions. Senior administration officials were also adamant that this bill was true reform when fanning out on the Sunday shows. “If you look at the massive changes to this, we fixed a broken tax system. That’s what this was all about,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” adding that lobbyists had “absolutely” been defeated in the crafting of the bill.

But it also looks like lobbying efforts and the power of the status quo reduced GOP tax writers’ ambitions along the way, with the people more likely to lose being “bicycle commuters, gamblers, workers whose companies give them free food.” In the end, as Marc Goldwein of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget noted, this tax bill will only completely get rid of one significant incentive — Section 199 for manufacturers.

Exhibit B: Remember how Trump kept wanting to call this effort tax cuts, not tax reform? Your Morning Tax author, in pointing out how this tax bill is the culmination of decades of work for a lot of D.C. supply-siders, also noted it’s in some ways a marriage of traditional tax reforms like 1986 and the vast tax cuts that Republicans pushed through in 1981 and 2001. In fact, Marty Sullivan of Tax Analysts said the bill looks far more like the latter than the former, and even some of those supply-siders said Republicans could have leaned in more on getting rid of tax preferences. “There’s some loophole closing, but not nearly enough,” The Heritage Foundation's Stephen Moore told Morning Tax.

THE WEEK AHEAD: Republicans look to be down at least one vote when the Senate considers the tax bill this week, with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) heading back to Arizona before Congress finishes up its work for the year. The House is expected to take up the compromise tax bill on Tuesday, with the Senate to follow closely behind.

Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) also missed votes at the Capitol last week, making his attendance this week a potential wild card, too. But that’s not as big a deal anymore because Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said Friday that he’d back the bill, even though the price tag issues that led Corker to initially oppose it weren’t really addressed in the final legislation.

That final bill does include what Bloomberg termed a “complicated provision late in the process — one that would provide a multimillion-dollar windfall to real estate investors such as President Donald Trump.” The provision, which was a hybrid of the House and Senate approaches to taxing pass-through businesses, could easily help Corker as well, given that the Tennessee Republican owns pass-throughs with real estate holdings. Corker said the provision had nothing to do with his change of heart, though the International Business Times has its doubts. He then followed up Sunday by asking Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) for more details on how that provision ended up in the final bill.

WELCOME BACK, EVERYBODY. It looks like we’re in the final week of tax bill, the legislative process — to be followed soon thereafter by tax bill, the implementation. (That last part’s going to take a little longer.)

Today also marks 85 years since the Chicago Bears, with the help of stars like Red Grange and Bronko Nagurski, won the first NFL championship game over the Portsmouth (Ohio) Spartans — the sort of outcome any Bears fan, Morning Tax included, can tell you has been severely lacking this last quarter century or so. (The Portsmouth Spartans later became the Detroit Lions, for those scoring at home.)

We’re here for all the knowledge you want to impart. Email: bbecker@politico.com, teckert@politico.com, bfaler@politico.com, cwilhelm@politico.com, alorenzo@politico.com. Twitter: @berniebecker3, @tobyeckert, @brian_faler, @colinwilhelm, @AaronELorenzo, @POLITICOPro and @Morning_Tax.

** A message from the Intuit Tax and Financial Center: In our last Talking Tax video for the year, we are joined by Intuit’s Chief Tax Officer, David Williams, who recaps some of the highlights from a year of tax policy discussions, including conversations with experts on topics ranging from tax and regulatory reform to small business finances. http://bit.ly/2zf9kZW **

TAX BILL ROUNDUP: This measure looks likely to pass, but it also appears far less stable than previous tax bills, The Wall Street Journal’s Richard Rubin reports. That’s for a variety of reasons, too, including the fact that so much of the individual tax relief expires after eight years. The speed in which Republicans moved is also likely to require a pretty substantial technical corrections bill, and the Republican-only approach on the measure suggests that Democrats won’t be in the mood to let the new law gain traction — much like the GOP did with Obamacare.

To wit: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Sunday that Democrats would target a corporate rate increase if they get some levers of powers back next year. "We’re going to take a very hard look at this entire tax bill and make it a tax bill that works for the middle class and working families, not for top 1 percent and large multinational corporations," Sanders said on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” via our own Martin Matishak.

How strong is that territorial system? Republicans say the international provisions they crafted will give companies more incentive to invest in the U.S. and less to set up shop abroad. But a Washington Post survey of experts found some skeptics on if that would be the case, who outlined three separate reasons to worry about the GOP plan’s 10 percent minimum tax on offshore income. Those include the fact that the tax would only hit profits above the routine rate of return on tangible assets abroad like factories, and that routine return is set at a seemingly high 10 percent. The tax itself would also be computed as a global average, which critics say wouldn’t really close down the use of offshore tax havens.

And what about those settlements? The bill does contain a provision that bars taxpayers from deducting as a business expense settlements for sexual harassment or abuse or related lawyer’s fees if those payments were covered by a nondisclosure agreement. But, as The New York Times reports, there are questions about how much of an impediment the new language would provide. “This is a nudge, not a hammer,” Daniel Hemel of the University of Chicago Law School told the NYT. Why? For really big companies, a nondisclosure can add far more value — like protection from lawsuits, and protection of reputation — than mere tax savings.

TO THE AIRWAVES: 45Committee, the outside pro-Trump group, will announce a new advertisement today praising Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) for his vote in favor of the GOP tax bill. The spot, which will air on both broadcast and cable throughout the state, specifically links Wicker with the president, saying “they’re fighting to cut taxes and make Mississippi strong again.”

One particular reason that ad might be helpful for Wicker: Chris McDaniel, a Mississippi state senator who has the support of Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, has been considering a challenge to Wicker.

INTERNATIONAL UPDATE

UP NEXT: Margrethe Vestager, the European Union’s competition czar, has a new corporate power in her sights — IKEA, our POLITICO Europe colleague Nicholas Hirst reports. The furniture maker, founded in Sweden but now based in the Netherlands, would be the latest company under the microscope in Brussels for its tax maneuvers. Vestager’s investigation could start as soon as this week, and “is expected to focus on rulings issued to the company by the Netherlands that allegedly allowed the company to cycle profits through the EU.”

STATE NEWS

NO REVENGE OF THE SNOWBIRDS: It’s unlikely that the tax bill will cause a flood of migration from New York to Florida or New Jersey to Texas — even with the new looming limitations in the state and local tax deduction, The Wall Street Journal reports. In short, taxes aren’t everything. “Decades of research have concluded that state tax burdens and other fiscal policies matter for some Americans in determining where they live, though the evidence is mixed on just how much people care about tax rates relative to other factors like schools, housing and jobs.”

QUICK LINKS

Conservative attacks against the IRS have blunted the agency’s ability to regulate political activity of charities.

Here are the tax bill's winners and losers.

Is the GOP’s biggest win on the tax bill just not losing?

NYT op-ed: “A Tax Plan to Turbocharge Inequality, in 3 Charts.”

DID YOU KNOW?

Jai alai players use a wicker glove called a cesta.

** A message from the Intuit Tax and Financial Center: It has been our privilege over the past year to encourage and inform the conversations surrounding the most complex and topical tax policy issues facing America today. As part of this effort, we have continued our online video series “Talking Tax with Intuit” to bring together experts in tax policy and administration to share their views on these very important tax questions. In our final Talking Tax of the year, Intuit’s Chief Tax Officer David Williams highlights the Center’s work to convene these leading experts both online and on Capitol Hill. With tax reform still being discussed and debated, we will continue to bring together a diverse group of experts to explore these topics in the new year. Watch the full video here. http://bit.ly/2zf9kZW **