The worse is something that even Shrub Bush didn't try — the full elimination of both the estate tax, and worse yet, of the alternative minimum tax.
Doubling of the standard deduction sounds great — until the realization that compressing tax brackets to just three mean that anybody making very much above minimum wage will likely pay more, with the bottom bracket rising by 2 percentage points. The idea that raising the standard deduction would simplify taxes for many may itself be a smokescreen, depending on what the income level is set at to jump to the dramatically higher second tier of 25 percent. (As a sidebar to the top link notes, the plan doesn't say where the new brackets would start at.) And, for middle-class to upper-middle-class people in pricier states, whether red or blue, with more state taxes — property, income, or both — killing these deductions would be a tough sled, the same link notes.
As for this being tax "reform," per a Tweet from the official GOP account?
As I tweeted back, actual tax reform would, at a minimum:
1. Include a corporate flat tax. (You know how much the old flat tax is a scam by the simple fact that GOP Congresscritters have repeatedly proposed one for individuals but never for corporations.)
2. Taxing hedge fund income as regular, ordinary income.
3. Overhauling the pass-through portion of corporate income taxes to eliminate them from being used by big business.
Otherwise, on the big picture side, it appears that there's not even an attempt to gussy this up with "supply-side trickle-down." Rather, in addition to screwing many individual taxpayers, even before we get a CBO scoring, I'm sure this would be at least a $50 billion a year deficit increaser. (Note that the Trumpster and GOP Congresscritters have said nothing, as far as I can see, about this being a revenue-neutral bill.)
And, that's surely not over one year, but the AP says it would have a net cost of more than $2 trillion.
But, you know, Democrats don't have room to crow. First, per the Liberal Values blog, with that nice graphic, millennials don't trust Democrats tremendously more than Republicans, and per one poll, white millennials distrust them just as much.
And, on taxes, they shouldn't.
Remember the Bush tax cuts? The ones that, per the Wikipedia link, had a sunset provision, but Dear Leader and a Democrat-majority Congress extended them in 2012. Then, as part of the 2012 budget staredown, Obama agreed to make them permanent for people making less than $400K?
That $400,000 is a big chunk of income, even in pricier states, unless one lives in Manhattan, or parts of San Francisco, Silicon Valley, or Hollywood. (All blue-ish as far as the Democratic donor class.)
Remember how Obama weaseled out of his original $250K, even though he, and Congressional Dems, could have done differently as final action was taken AFTER the midterm elections, during a lame-duck session when Democrats still controlled Congress?
So what if Senate Republicans blocked cloture? Democrats had the ultimate weapon — that the tax breaks were sunsetting.
Beyond that, Obama never offered up a constructive tax plan of his own. And, never coordinated to do this with Congressional Dems.
That said, even among modern presidents, Obama had a pretty high level of throwing his own Congressional party under the bus. We all know about the 2010 midterm blowouts. They didn't have to be that bad, if Obama had done some targeted campaigning for Congresscritters, governors and state legiscritters. At the state level, that of course led to the current reapportionment disaster.
ReplyDeleteThe idea that 3 tax brackets is simpler than 7 is disingenuous too. Even
when I did mine by hand all you had to do was look it up in a table. In the days of turbo tax, the computer does thtat for you..
What it really means is that a lot of middle class people will be getting there tax increased to 35% and a lot of rich people will see their rate drop to 35%. It a gift to the rich disguised as at 'simplification'
And the elimination of state and local deduction (not exactly a gimick) is a transfer of wealth from California to Mississippi and Texas. It increases even more the 'welfare' we already provide for these states.
The idea the three brackets instead of is simpler fhsn 7 iz disingenuoustoo.
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