The veteran advisor and CPA also said he had concerns that the bill’s supposed focus on taxing the wealthy would have had a trickle down effect that would have hurt more taxpayers than White House analysis showed.

“I think that the tax provisions to have the ‘ultra wealthy’ pay for Build Back Better were not truly targeted at ultra wealthy billionaires, but rather business owners and even successful small business owners,” Bishop said.

That would have hurt wealth and job creation, he added. It would also have stymied wealthier investors and advisor clients’ who have more complicated estate planning and wealth transfer goals.

“There would have been many areas where there would have been huge complications for those that have followed the law and done prudent planning,” said Bishop, who added that he has been writing about Build Back Better for clients for more than a year to help them understand the potential challenges.

Some advisors like Andrew Altfest, President of $1.6 billion Altfest Personal Wealth Management in New York City, say their high-net worth clients could have benefited from some provisions of BBB, especially the proposed expansion of the state and local tax deduction from $10,000 to $80,000.

“This is something that’s been on the minds of advisors and clients in blue states like New York, New Jersey and Connecticut since 2017, when the SALT cap was drastically cut. Most of our clients would have had the opportunity to reduce their taxes if the cap was expanded by passing Build Back Better, so this is not a great moment for them,” Altfest said.

Losing the expanded SALT deduction is “another disincentive to live in New York, which already hurt the housing market and hurts retirees. We continue to see people moving to Florida, South Carolina and Texas,” the wealth manager said.

The failure to pass the SALT expansion also means that fewer people will itemize their deductions and as a result, that will limit charitable contributions, Altfest said.

“If they raised the SALT cap to $80,000, than the state and local taxes you pay would have pushed you beyond standard deduction, so anything you gave to charity would have been deductible,” he added.

From a macro economic perspective, however, Altfest said he can understand why the proposal was stalled. “We have a huge amount of stimulus and economic growth right now and there’s a feeling that additional stimulus is not well timed and would fan the flames of inflation further,” Altfest said.