#schedule c

Michael Sainato and Rachel Leingang at The Guardian:

Trump signed an executive order on Thursday creating a new classification of federal employees who would be subject to hiring and firing by the president, Schedule G, for employees working on policy, in the latest action by his administration to reshape the federal workforce. The non-career classified employees will be expected to leave in changing presidential administrations, with the order claiming it will “improve operations, particularly in agencies like the Department of Veterans Affairs, by streamlining appointments for key policy roles”. The order did not cite how many employees would fall under the new classification. “President Trump is delivering on his promise to dismantle the deep state and reclaim our government from Washington corruption,” the White House said in a fact sheet on the order. The classification appears similar to Schedule C, which refers to temporary federal employees working on policy issues.

“We already have Schedule F (turning career civil servants into at-will employees). Now Trump is announcing Schedule G: Opens space at top ranks of govt for Trump loyalists as policymakers, with no limit on hires. Continues pattern of politicization,” wrote Don Moynihan, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan, on social media in response to the executive order.

Schedule F, which Trump tried to implement near the end of his first term in office, was revived earlier this year. It strips civil service protections afforded to other federal employee classifications, making it easier to fire these employees at-will. Since Trump took office, his administration has sought to strip civil service protections for large swaths of federal employees, eliminate collective bargaining rights, and make it easier for the administration to fire federal employees at-will and without cause.

Lisa Needham at Daily Kos:

As the Trump administration indiscriminately fires tens of thousands of talented civil servants, it also wants to shell out big salaries to the hackiest of partisan hacks.  On April 10, Charles Ezell, the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, sent a letter to all agency heads, saying his office “reaffirms flexibilities” in setting the terms of employment for Schedule C employees. Schedule C employees are political appointees, and according to OPM, they typically serve in policy or confidential roles, often as confidential assistants, special counsels, and policy experts. They don’t require Senate confirmation but must be requested and approved by OPM. Per Ezell, the flexibility to pay an initial salary of up to $195,200 to appointees is necessary to attract the people who will help “drive the unusually expansive and transformative agenda the American people elected President Trump to accomplish.” 

Usually, these positions are filled by people with specific policy expertise or a background in providing assistance in confidential settings. An analysis of former President Joe Biden’s Schedule C employees, conducted by the nonpartisan group Leadership Connect, found that the bulk of the hires were from top colleges, more than 75% had at least five years’ experience post-college, and had most recently worked in nonprofits, on Capitol Hill, elsewhere in the federal government, or on a campaign.  Well, that all sounds good, right? So how many people are we talking about here? In the last year of Barack Obama’s presidency, there were 1,403 Schedule C employees. Leadership Connect’s January 2022 analysis found the Biden administration had appointed 745 Schedule C employees by that point. If the Trump administration hopes to use Schedule C jobs to fill in some of the gaps it created when it fired 200,000 federal workers, then it’ll have to hire a lot more than 1,400.  However, Ezell’s letter is vague on the reason for the Schedule C jobs. It may just be a way to smuggle an indeterminate number of hardcore, unqualified partisans into sweet federal government jobs.

[...] To get a sense of how attainable that is for normal civil servants, that salary happens at what is called Grade 15 and Step 6 of employment. The “grade” reflects the job’s level of difficulty, its responsibilities, and the qualifications needed for it, while the “step” reflects the number of years a worker has had the role as long as they’ve performed acceptably. 

In practice, moving from Step 1 to Step 10 normally takes 18 years. Moving up in grade is more flexible, dependent on performance and promotions. People with a master’s degree usually come in around Grade 9 to start, or $69,923. Those are people with advanced degrees and experience in the field, but they would receive about 36% of the salary that the unvetted, unqualified Schedule C individuals would receive.  The Trump administration is full of wildly incompetent people who have convinced themselves they got there on merit, when instead it’s generally due to a combination of a rather flexible sense of morality, a deep hatred for whomever Trump also hates, and because they are a white straight man. White straight men, in the Trump worldview, are inherently meritorious hires, standing on their own two feet, while everyone else is an unqualified diversity hire.  So the administration doesn’t seem to care that Trump appointee Billy Long, currently tucked away at OPM while awaiting confirmation to lead the Internal Revenue Service, seems to be doing almost nothing at OPM. And the administration remains behind Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, arguably the least competent Cabinet member in an administration well stocked with them. 

In addition to Trump hollowing out the civil service, he is also attempting to reclassify tens of thousands of civil servants as at-will employees, making them easier to fire. 

Are these monthly payments to Google paying for business ads? Some kind of Google web service you use for work? Some non-business-related subscription for a Google-related service? How the heck is your accountant supposed to know?

Ideally, you'd be keeping track of your expenses on your own, for personal record-keeping purposes if nothing else. But if you're not, at least fucking annotate your bank statements before dumping them in our lap!

Small business owners should find out if they can benefit from claiming this deduction

The home office deduction can help small business owners save money on their taxes. Taxpayers can take this deduction when they file their taxes if they use a portion of their home exclusively, and on a regular basis, for any of the following:

As the taxpayer’s main place of business.

As a place of business where the taxpayer meets patients, clients or customers. The taxpayer must meet these…