So we're well into 2026 now and the dust has settled on what was actually a pretty significant shift in how people file taxes. Looking back at the Trump tax changes that rolled out for 2025 returns, there's a lot more going on than most people realize.

The biggest immediate impact? Standard deductions got a real bump. Single filers saw an extra $750 bringing it to $15,750, and joint filers got $500 more hitting $31,500. Sounds modest but it adds up when you're calculating your return.

What really caught people's attention though was the SALT deduction situation. That jumped from $10,000 to $40,000, which is massive for high-earner households in expensive states. Fair warning though - it's temporary. The limit phases back down starting in 2030, so people banking on that long-term are going to be disappointed.

There's also this interesting senior deduction play happening. If you're 65 or older, you get an extra $6,000 deduction (or $12,000 for married couples) on top of the existing senior deduction. The administration basically engineered a workaround to reduce Social Security tax burden without actually touching Social Security law itself. Pretty clever if you think about it.

For families, the child tax credit nearly doubled - now $2,200 per child instead of $200. That's substantial for people with multiple kids. And if you've got significant assets, the estate tax exemption jumped to $15 million for individuals and $30 million for married couples starting in 2026.

Then there are these weird but useful new deductions for 2025-2028. You can now deduct up to $25,000 in tips, $12,500 in overtime wages, and $10,000 in annual auto loan interest. Before this, none of that was deductible. For gig workers and people with side income, that's actually valuable.

One of the more experimental moves was the Trump account credits - a $1,000 one-time credit per newborn if parents open these specific investment accounts for their kids. It's basically a forced savings mechanism for childhood retirement accounts, funded through mutual funds and ETFs. Kids get access at 18.

And for people who don't itemize, charitable deductions are back. Up to $1,000 for single filers and $2,000 for married couples. That's permanent after 2025, so it's not going anywhere.

The whole point of these Trump tax changes was to make the 2016 cuts permanent while adding new layers of relief. Treasury reported average refunds were up 22% year-over-year when people started filing in early 2025. Whether that holds long-term depends on how many of these provisions actually expire as scheduled.