
Show HN: Effects of House and Senate Bill on California Residents - brockwhittaker
http://flu.io/2018-tax-bills/
======
kxyvr
Nice tool, but a lot of the market is being altered in a way that blows out
these savings. For example, I run my business and my overall tax rate last
year was 28%. However, when I account for healthcare premiums and hitting my
out of pocket max, I was over 40%. According to the calculator, my tax burden
is reduced slightly under the plan. That said, my health costs for next year
went up 37% and I'm receiving worse coverage. As such, I will be at a net loss
for 2018 and it looks like it will become worse in 2019 if the individual
mandate is eliminated.

So, no, I don't expect a calculator to be perfect, but I can't help but stress
how important the changes in healthcare costs for self-employed are under this
plan.

~~~
technotony
My view is that if the individual mandate is eliminated then other insurers
will come into the market with cheaper plans that don't include everything (Eg
mental health) so health costs for healthy self-employed folks will go down.
The thing I've always hated about Obamacare was how healthy self employed
folks are subsiding the unhealthy people, this happens because most people in
their 20's or 30s are covered by work plans which have a better risk pool.

~~~
kxyvr
I'm sure it will for some people. That said when I was 21, I was diagnosed and
treated for stage 3 melanoma and I can assure you the drugs that I took during
that year were not cheap. At this point, it's been more than a decade and I'm
wonderfully healthy, but I'm considered a high-risk because of my past with
cancer.

Now, there's a very valid moral question as to whether or not I'm entitled to
have my healthcare subsidized by others in a pool and I'm fine having that
conversation. From an economic point of view, I'm just shy of my mid-thirties
with an advanced degree, been in the black with a self-funded business for the
last 4-5 years, and have the potential to release products in the near future
that could return millions in tax dollars. However, I may be robbed of that
opportunity if I'm unable to purchase health insurance that covers cancer.
Certainly, that's a frustrating proposition given that the only major misstep
that I had was being unfortunate enough to become afflicted with a disease not
under my control.

And, just in case someone is curious about high-risk pools, I actually
currently carry insurance from one because the ACA marketplace in my state
does not offer PPOs and I have one regular appointment out of state. Anyway,
the coverage and cost of high-risk pools varied wildly from state to state. As
an example, since I'm familiar with TX, prior to disbanding the pool, the law
allowed high-risk individuals to purchase insurance at twice the prevailing
rate from the pool. If I recall correctly, its pool used a PPO, which is no
longer found on the exchange, so we'll use a gold plan EPO to approximate. In
Harris county, the current premium for that rate is $429/month with an out of
pocket max of $6350. If we went back to the old model of twice the prevailing
rate, I'd have to budget $16,646/year, which isn't all that far off from what
it used to be. Now, that's just TX and different states had different rules.
In the state I'm currently in, the 2018 premium will be $514/month with a
$5000 out of pocket max. And, to be clear, there is cheaper health insurance
available, but my perspective of coverage and costs changed dramatically after
my illness. Health insurance doesn't mean much if it doesn't cover the doctors
you trust for a price you can afford.

Anyway, my point is that just because someone is in their 30's and healthy
doesn't mean that their coverage will become cheaper or even attainable.
Further, this has broad economic implications because it will quite simply
force many of us out of the self-employed market because it's not responsible
to carry an insurance plan that does not provide comprehensive coverage. This
tax plan has been touted as helping small businesses, but it may end mine
depending on what happens to the market in 2019.

~~~
scarface74
My situation was crazy. I was denied insurance right before the ACA took
effect because of a "preexisting condition" that I never thought about. I have
what for all intents and purposes is very mild cerebral palsy. As an adult,
I've never had any complications, I was in excellent shape - I had been a part
time fitness instructor for years and ran two half marathons the year before.
The only noticeable effect of my CP is one of my hands.

------
monocasa
I guess this sort of misses the main point, IMO.

Sure, my taxes will go down, but I have grad student friends that may have to
drop out because they now have to treat waived tuition as income, and pay ~10k
tax on it somehow with their 20k-30k stipend they get. And I've got friends
with kids that are going to see their tax burden go up by thousands.

Meanwhile with all of this 'simplification' and 'getting rid of subsidies',
we're not doing the same for corporate or high income 'subsidies'.

~~~
xyzzyz
_I have grad student friends that may have to drop out because they now have
to treat waived tuition as income_

If this happens, this will be a huge failure on their institution part. The
only reason their tax bill might be affected is due to creative accounting
practices of universities, who use the tuition waiver as a way to skim more
money from the grants. Universities will just start offering education for
free instead of waiving the tuition, and will find a new accounting trick to
take money from federal science grants in "overhead".

~~~
scarmig
1) Why does the tax bill assume that treating waived tuition as income will
raise revenue, then, if all universities will just switch to different
accounting methods? Or is this one of the many parts of the tax bill that will
actually increase the deficit but needs some kind of plausible cover until the
buck can be passed?

2) "creative accounting" and "skim more money" are pretty ridiculous ways to
describe how research grants work. It's a system like any other. Disrupting it
for no particular reason is anything but conservative.

~~~
jeremyt
Because that’s how the game is played. When scoring the effect of a tax bill,
you were not allowed to take into consideration changes in behavior

~~~
bradleyjg
Didn't they get $500 billion worth of new revenue credit in the JCT score
exactly by taking into account changes in behavior (aka dynamic scoring)?

------
a_humean
I'm guessing this covers just 2018/19 and not the lead up to 2027. A lot of
these individual income tax cuts not permanent, and are set to expire in
stages towards 2027. The bill is going through reconciliation with senate
rules restricting deficits increases after 10 years (the bill is deficit
financed to the tune of $1.5 trillion - which is insanity).

Pretty much the only permanent features of the bill are the corporate rate,
the pass through shenanigans, removal of estate tax, and removal of a number
of deductions such as SALT, etc... also sabotaging the ACA marketplaces by
repealing the individual mandate.

~~~
dionidium
This is a prominent criticism, but it strikes me as fundamentally weird to
say, yeah, you're right that these are tax cuts, but the cuts expire in 10
years. This is government. Who knows what the world will look like in 10
years? Would, say, 20 years be better? Sure, I guess. But 10 years is a pretty
long time. It's pretty difficult to plan most personal finances out that far,
anyway. Who knows what your own life will be like in 10 years?

Isn't the complaint that the cuts don't last longer tacit approval of the
cuts?

~~~
a_humean
As another commentator said, its not really tacit approval of the cuts. The
point I and others are making is that these cuts are clearly designed to be a
political smokescreen for midterm elections. These cuts are deficit financed
giveaways that in most cases will disappear, and in many cases income tax
payers will see tax increases on income in later years to finance the
permanent cuts elsewhere.

The actual goal of the bill are the changes the congress choose to be
permanent, which are the cuts on corporate rates, pass-through rates, and
estate tax, which benefit a very small group of tax payers.

~~~
dionidium
I think I’d want to argue that in tax policy, anything nominally permanent
isn’t and anything set to expire in 10 years likely won’t.

I’d be worried if this were the last ever tax bill, but since it isn’t, and
since 10 years is a pretty long time, I don’t think it’s so bad (even if I
agree with you about some portions (e.g. the elimination of the estate tax)).

------
kbourgoin
You should consider showing how they change over time, since a lot of the
personal deductions will be phased out.

~~~
masivemunkey
Definitely important. A lot of people will get slight benefit that will phase
out over years. Corporation tax cuts never expire though.

------
Afforess
I love calculators. What I haven't seen yet is a calculator that shows you
where the money originated from. How much of my tax deduction is new debt, vs
money stripped from Medicare, Social Security, College Graduate deductions,
etc. It's not enough to know how much more _I am getting_ , but where the
money originated from.

~~~
jpadkins
money is fungible. You can't trace it to a specific origin.

~~~
Afforess
That's pure pessimism. You can compare the previous-year government budget and
next-year government budget and work out the gaps. Sure, the money might have
all sloshed together in the general fund, but the _average_ values are all
matter for analysis on an individual level.

------
brockwhittaker
Hey, I built this in my spare time over the past few days to calculate some of
the basic implications of the new House and Senate Tax Bills on personal
income taxes.

This is open source and available on GitHub here:
[https://github.com/brockwhittaker/House-Senate-Tax-
Bills/](https://github.com/brockwhittaker/House-Senate-Tax-Bills/)

If you have any questions or issues, you can open them on GitHub or contact me
at: whittakerbrock@gmail.com

~~~
liquidgecka
I just filed this issue: [https://github.com/brockwhittaker/House-Senate-Tax-
Bills/iss...](https://github.com/brockwhittaker/House-Senate-Tax-
Bills/issues/2)

You are not properly changing the deduction for married people. You have a
single static value that gets used and is the "single" setting..

That ore I read the code completely wrong (which is always a possibility) =)

------
propman
This doesn't count AMT, everyone in the state who itemizes and makes more than
$200k has to pay the amt essentially making deductions completely useless. A
NYT article showed how elites in Cali and NY will lose money but I calculated
various incomes and the only people who would lose money are the ones making
$1M plus. The article completely excluded that fact. Steph curry for instance
will lose over a million in this new bill because he doesn't pay AMT currently
and deducts $2M stats taxes. Not being able to deduct that plus only a minor
drop in income tax brackets screws him.

This is not a bad bill. Very few people wil have to pay more and those that do
are making $1M + and they'd slightly see a decrease while people with $5M+
will see a more significant decrease, so I'm not concerned. That being said, I
think there should be even a bigger tax cut on the middle class and greater
deductions for disabled seniors. Family making $50k with 2 kids barely saves
more than a family $35k with 2 kids especially if they have Medicaid while the
other family has insane premiums and deductibles.

~~~
imbusy111
If everyone pays less, where is the money coming from then?

~~~
tasty_freeze
They claim it will come from a huge economic boom which will be unleashed by
cutting corporate tax rates.

However, a proposal to automatically undo some of the changes if the
"guaranteed to pay for itself" plan fails was scrapped. I'd rather have
challenged those claiming the cuts would pay for themselves to put up or shut
up: force retirement if the growth didn't appear.

~~~
propman
That was political grandstanding. Imagine if some war broke out or something
like the financial crisis happened in 3 years. Already poor economic growth,
401k crashing, job cutting, businesses losing money and all of a sudden taxes
go up 15%? It would sink the economy and force govt to pay trillions. It was a
comically absurd idea that becomes easily refuted with 5 seconds of thought.
Unfortunately, 99% of politics is grandstanding, just hope that things that
pass into actual law are rational.

------
awinder
I would love this even more if you could input your itemization total. This
tool is so much better than the ones I’ve seen previously, and actually it’s
kind of ridiculous that congress can’t create this tool. Being educated about
the personal effects of this bill is just good governance.

------
pascalxus
Great calculator! Just what i was looking for. I like the simple UI.

But, you should add the state tax as well as the FICO and social security tax/
medicare tax, to show a more complete picture.

------
scrumper
Thanks for doing this.

What about mortgage interest and property tax?

EDIT: I'm skeptical this is right. I'm in a high tax state, with high property
and mortgage interest. Yet this shows me between 1% and 12% better off despite
every report I've read and www.republicantaxcalculator.com showing me much,
much worse off.

~~~
efoto
Not taking property and mortgage interest into account, this tool is
misleading at best! I just did my projections. This calculator shows our
family will benefit slightly, when in fact our taxes will increase approx. 25K
or 40% per year.

~~~
scrumper
That's what I was expecting too. How did you do those calculations, if you
don't mind sharing? With an accountant, the hard way with a spreadsheet, or
(please!) some magical accurate online calculator with 5 fields and a big
button?

Thanks!

~~~
efoto
I apologize for missing your question.

Well, first I used the new brackets to calculate the tax and found us slightly
in the black. Then I dug out my last year tax return, added four numbers --
income tax, property tax, mortgage and donations -- subtracted proposed 24K
standard deduction and applied our new bracket (35%) to the difference.
Subtracted the first number. Felt robbed.

That said, I'm waiting for my CPA to get back to me with the projections for
2017 along with the tax reform impact estimate.

------
teilo
This is not accurate at all because it does not include things like the per-
child tax credit which has a dramatic effect on the taxes you pay.

~~~
ultrafilter
Indeed, the source code only considers tax brackets, the personal exemption,
and the standard deduction. I've read of an increase of $650 in the per-child
tax credit combined with the loss of the per-dependent personal exemption and
an increase in the standard deduction. If your last $4333 of annual income is
going to be taxed at rate of 15%, then a $650 credit is just as valuable as a
$4333 deduction or exemption and thus slightly more valuable than the current
$4050 personal exemption. Thus, contrary to this calculator, middle-class
families with lots of kids will not get big tax increases.

------
habosa
Can someone help me out here? Last year I paid 5-figure state income taxes
(CA) which, as far as I understand, is no longer deductible from my federal
income. So if my federal income taxes are ~30% then I'd expect to have a
$3000+ tax increase from the loss of that deduction.

Yet this tool implies I will get a tax cut.

What elements of the new bills will result in a tax cut large enough to offset
the loss of the SALT deduction? I am single, living in CA, no dependents. I do
not own a business.

~~~
kelnos
As a sibling noted, your standard deduction will double. That likely isn't
enough, so I would guess that juggling the income limits in the different
brackets is what made up for the difference.

My state income tax paid is more than even the new standard deduction amount,
and it showed a tax cut for me as well, so I can only assume the bracket reorg
is what did that.

In the end, my income & tax situation is more complicated than the simple
single slider this calculator gives, so it doesn't really tell me much that is
useful.

------
jorblumesea
Would love to see this over time. The tax breaks fall off pretty significantly
after a few years for the average person.

------
ProfessorLayton
This is interesting, but it needs more data input for a more accurate picture
for those who own a house, or hope to own one soon. Particularly those in the
Bay Area, where the 10k SALT cap wouldn't be too difficult to run into.

~~~
dv_dt
It's not a 10K SALT cap, its a 10k property tax deduction cap, the itemized
deduction for state and local income taxes are eliminated in both House and
Senate versions as far as I understand.

~~~
mrgordon
Correct although they're now considering adding it back... (who knows how they
would pay for it)

~~~
pkaye
Lets squeeze the college students more...

------
tedajax
Looks like it got hugged to death.

~~~
brockwhittaker
It should be fixed now! Didn't work too well on a DigitalOcean server w/ 512mb
RAM and 100 requests a minute. :)

~~~
gizmodo59
Have you scaled the size of the server or added more servers? Would be
interesting to know some stats as I'm thinking between DO vs Vultr

------
sowbug
Would be nice to include a field for long-term capital gains. Removal of the
state income-tax deduction changes the effective tax rate for those gains,
which would help someone decide whether to realize those gains in the
remaining weeks of 2017 or else to keep holding.

------
Rebelgecko
I will be itemizing this year, it would be nice if I could add some of those
writroffs in with this calculator. In my case, it's the difference between my
taxes going down or up

------
cdurth
his github project if you want to run it locally:
[https://github.com/brockwhittaker/House-Senate-Tax-
Bills/](https://github.com/brockwhittaker/House-Senate-Tax-Bills/)

~~~
exabrial
I was about to ask this since his site is taking a pounding ATM.

EDIT ==== How in the heck do you run it?

~~~
rileyphone
npm install && npm start

------
pkaye
This seems to imply that families with 2 kids and a median household income of
$60k will owe a extra $5k in taxes?

Edit: misread it. Not $5k more but 15-20% more.

~~~
Tempest1981
More kids results in less "tax benefit"... is that correct/intentional?

~~~
pkaye
I think it is because the exemptions are eliminated. Of course I don't know
how accurate this calculator is but if you enter my assumptions above for a
typical middle class family of 2 kids and $60k income, nearly every state has
higher taxes.

~~~
kthejoker2
There's no way this calculator is accurate.

Take A married couple with 2 kids with $60k AGI, all W2.

Filing in 2017, standard deduction:

60k - 12.7k deduction - 16.2k exemption = 31.1 taxable income, with ladder
rates that's $3,733 - $2,000 in child tax credits for $1,733.

Filing in 2017 with a 24,000 (!! out of 60k!) itemized deduction to match the
new standard deduction:

60k - 24k deduction - 16.2k exemption = 19.8k taxable income, ladder rates
make it $2,038 - $2,000 in tax credits for a grand total of $38 in taxes owed.

Current Senate proposal:

60k - 24k standard deduction = 36k taxable income, with proposed ladder rates
that's $3,939 - $4,000 child tax credits, you owe $0.

Hard to see a scenario where: a) a 60k family is itemizing that much, and b)
the child tax credit doesn't significantly increase.

------
scblock
This site completely hoses the back button, and doesn't give any kind of
future look, rendering it largely pointless and annoying.

------
hkmurakami
Nice UI, not very useful / actionable in terms of actual insights.

We've had a couple of threads about Excel lately and the power/beauty of Excel
is that it'll be butt ugly but someone with zero programming knowledge but
extensive tax knowledge can build a model for you that'll give you great
actionable insights with decently quick turnaround.

~~~
jxramos
ditto, it would be nice to show the intermediate calculations in MathML or
something. Let us see the flow of money, that is more interesting than
anything else.

------
pascalxus
The calculator shows people who make a lot of money 1million+ and very little
money < 50K will have a bigger federal tax bill.

they'll only be able to deduct 10k of the prop taxes too

~~~
poulsbohemian
But let's be clear, US median household income is $59,039, so the $50K you
cite is not actually "very little money" but rather a normal income _for a
household_. Agreed that in reality, it is very little money when we take into
account CoL, household debt, etc. This bill, combined with the ongoing burden
of health care expenses, will continue to cripple the typical US household.

Source:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/12/business/economy/income-r...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/12/business/economy/income-
rebound-recession.html)

------
joshuahutt
Holy history, Batman!

I dragged the sliders around for a minute, and my browser history was
completely decimated by identically-named entries.

Maybe replace the existing state rather than pushing the new one?

------
perseusprime11
These tax bills are hilarious. For the majority of us, it is like moving money
from your left pocket to the right pocket. There is no savings whatsoever
besides bad healthcare for all. This bill should really be called
"Corporations are people too, my friends" bill as it really gives away money
for rich companies who honestly do not need more money given Apple, Amazon,
Facebook and Google are becoming trillion dollar companies.

------
charter_sucks
huh. so i'm going to benefit from these tax changes.

interesting.

~~~
deadmetheny
Most people will. What most people are getting mad about is that a lot of the
personal deductions will expire in the future, and that the ultra-wealthy are
getting a tax discount as well as the average person.

~~~
malnourish
It looks like filing single with even one dependent drastically increases the
tax burden in both plans.

Additionally, the House plan raises the tax burden in those making less than
30k.

~~~
rednerrus
Adding three dependents to mine raised my tax bill 20%.

Thanks Obama!

------
archerface
Is the site broken for anyone else? I see {{ STATE }} when I get into the page
and a bunch of template variables in the page. None of the controls work and I
have disabled my adblock, https everywhere, etc.

EDIT: Never mind, false alarm

~~~
castis
It looks like that until all the javascript loads. The site is currently being
hugged to death so it takes a minute.

------
juicefs
The result is very different from this one[1], for a family with 2 kids.

Which one is more close to the fact?

[1] [http://taxplancalculator.com/calc](http://taxplancalculator.com/calc)

------
aosmith
And it's down. This is why we can't have nice things.

------
danielhughes
Nice work. You should consider making the state field optional. There is a
large expat community who still need to file US taxes (but not state taxes).

~~~
hamandcheese
Just pick a state without income tax, such as Florida.

------
thinkloop
The media has been portraying this tax bill as a major break for billionaires,
but these charts don't seem to show that.

~~~
a_humean
Two reasons for that:

1) These are the first year income tax cuts, but most of these income tax cuts
are getting phased out over time after the first year. By 2027 some of these
income groups may see tax increases, and most won't see much benefit at all.

2) The temporary income tax cuts are peanuts compared to what is happening
with the corporate rate, pass-throughs, capital gains, and estate tax (all
permanent), which benefit people that own companies and/or inherit wealth -
which is predominately the richest people. The richest people in the country
don't get their wealth from their income, but rather from returns on capital.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
I thought capital gains rates weren't changing?

------
ndirish1842
Great tool

If I can feature request, would love to see city/local taxes accounted for,
especially with the SALT deduction removed.

Good work!!

------
sb8244
Template is {{var}} on iOS Safari

~~~
brockwhittaker
Fixed now. Was getting hugged to death. :)

~~~
stephengillie
Site appears to be hugged to death again.

------
vkdelta
link is dead. Please check if your server is dead. any alternate links?

------
nodesocket
Would be great if this supported my situation, single member LLC (pass-
through). Though probably not popular here on HN, the bill's goal is to reduce
the burden of taxes on small business and corporations to promote
repatriotization of capital back to the US.

~~~
madamelic
>reduce the burden of taxes on small business and corporations to promote
repatriotization of capital back to the US.

The horror of giving a fair share to the country that supports your
corporation.

I think we should fine companies like Apple who bilk the US and refuse to
bring back hundreds of billions until they get a sweetheart deal.

~~~
nodesocket
It's not a sweetheart deal. US corporate tax rates are some of the highest in
the entire world. It is just smart by Apple to ship capital off until it makes
business sense. I suspect we are not going to agree about this though.

~~~
toomuchtodo
This is nonsense. The effective tax rate lands right in the middle of most
OECD countries.

[https://www.npr.org/2017/08/07/541797699/fact-check-does-
the...](https://www.npr.org/2017/08/07/541797699/fact-check-does-the-u-s-have-
the-highest-corporate-tax-rate-in-the-world)

[https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/actual-us-
corporat...](https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/actual-us-corporate-
tax-rates-are-in-line-with-comparable-countries)

~~~
nodesocket
Did you even read the article you linked? There is a reason all the bay area
tech companies have offices in Dublin Ireland... 12.5% corporate rate.

> The long answer: The U.S. has the highest top corporate tax rate at least
> among advanced economies. Compared with nations in the OECD — the
> Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of highly
> developed countries — the U.S. has the highest top corporate tax rate in the
> world.

~~~
hirsin
From the rest of the article:

> Factor In Deductions And Other Expenditures, And The U.S. Corporate Tax Rate
> Isn’t So High

------
egberts1
Marriage deduction is not yet fully implemented.

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ebtalley
maybe it works on ie 11, not working on chrome.

------
rb808
Make sure you use incognito mode! I hate looking at sites like these. I'm sure
this one is probably OK but most aren't to be trusted.

Not only are you giving away personal financial info to an unknown site,
you're pairing that with your browser so making yourself a target to every
advertiser and scammer in the future.

~~~
blahshaw
I guess just drag the bar around a lot and look at a few different states.

------
javascript-this
could you NOT wreck my browser's back-button please?

------
Naaman_Fletcher
Who decided the color scale for the US map was a good idea? Holy shit it is
hard to tell the difference

------
joering2
Very interesting. Unsure how reliable the source is, but when you play with
salary indicator.. at $250k everything slowly starts turning gray and then
red. So this bill truly hits into top % of these that make more than 25k or
125k per spouse.

Only question remains what will the rich do with these savings. Administration
says people will hire more and buy more goods that will obviously turn into
more jobs and better economy. Let's hope for that!

------
dinoleif
Say what you want about the tax bill on net, the elimination of the SALT
deduction is very good for the country.

There is zero reason for the Feds to subsidize and distort incentivize to
encourage states to increase their tax burdens. SALT has always been one of
the most corrupt tax breaks (mortgage interest being another).

~~~
dragonwriter
> Say what you want about the tax bill on net, the elimination of the SALT
> deduction is very good for the country.

No, it's very _bad_.

> There is zero reason for the Feds to subsidize and distort incentivize to
> encourage states to increase their tax burdens.

That seems like a reasonable position, but SALT doesn't do that; quite the
opposite, it keeps federal taxation neutral in terms of incentives for state
and local taxes. _Not_ deducting state and local taxes distorts incentives by
creating a federal tax disincentive to state/local tax-funded programs that
produce a net economic gain. I've written up a simplified scenario
illustrating this in a recent prior discussion on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15855955](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15855955)

------
inetknght
This website literally just loads another page, IP address, over raw HTTP.
There's no way in hell I would trust it in any way, shape, or form. You really
should build your website better before showing it off.

Edit: It looks like the page does _not_ just load an iframe to an IP address
any more. I'll take back what I said.

~~~
brockwhittaker
Sorry, I'm doing this while the new DNS info propagates to point it to a new
server. My old server was too small and got crushed immediately. :(

~~~
joshuahutt
I'm curious as to why you even used a server at all. From the looks of it, you
could have shipped the server code with the frontend and saved some bandwidth.

