320 Years of History
Gold Member
I recently finished reading Trump's tax plan and the analysis of it. There are two readily accessed detailed analyses of his plan and both are linked in this post. I'm a CPA/MBA, but one doesn't need to be either to see who Trump is out to benefit with his tax plan. Suffice to say that it tosses "crumbs" to the middle class and "lobster, champagne, and caviar" to wealthy folks.
The summary and conclusion issued by the Urban Policy Center and Brookings Institute:
Now take one look at who today pays the lion's share of tax payments in the U.S.
Now riddle me this....
Do you still think Trump is out to genuinely help the middle class or is he just paying lip service to the idea of doing so while providing the real benefits to the people in the income brackets he's lived in his whole life?
This goes directly to the point I've been trying for all of the 2016 election cycle to make re: Trump: The man knows how to say what he needs to say to convince people of things they have no business actually believing. He's a marketing genius...and there's nothing wrong with that until he uses that skill to delude Americans who aren't well informed enough to see through it.
The summary and conclusion issued by the Urban Policy Center and Brookings Institute:
Summary:
His proposal would cut taxes at all income levels, although the largest benefits, in dollar and percentage terms, would go to the highest-income households. The plan would reduce federal revenues by $9.5 trillion over its first decade before accounting for added interest costs or considering macroeconomic feedback effects. The plan would improve incentives to work, save, and invest. However, unless it is accompanied by very large spending cuts, it could increase the national debt by nearly 80 percent of gross domestic product by 2036, offsetting some or all of the incentive effects of the tax cuts.
Conclusion:
Mr. Trump’s tax reform plan would boost incentives to work, save, and invest, and has the potential to simplify the tax code. By lowering marginal tax rates and further limiting or repealing many tax expenditures, it would reduce the incentives and opportunities to engage in some forms of wasteful tax avoidance. However, the plan could increase incentives for workers to characterize themselves as independent contractors, to take advantage of the lower tax rate on business income, unless new rules were introduced to prevent this. The proposal would cut taxes on households at every income level, but much more as a share of income at the top. The fundamental concern the plan poses is that, barring extraordinarily large cuts in government spending or future tax increases, it would yield persistently large, and likely unsustainable, budget deficits.
Now take one look at who today pays the lion's share of tax payments in the U.S.
When Trump wants to revise tax rates by creating only three brackets, the top one being such that a $1M/year household that relies on capital gains for their existence (i.e., trust fund folks) pays 20% rather than 39.5%, and a household of working folks earning from ~$75K/year to $300K/year also pays 20%, just what exactly is Trump really doing to benefit "regular" people, and what is he doing to benefit very well off people?
Do you still think Trump is out to genuinely help the middle class or is he just paying lip service to the idea of doing so while providing the real benefits to the people in the income brackets he's lived in his whole life?
This goes directly to the point I've been trying for all of the 2016 election cycle to make re: Trump: The man knows how to say what he needs to say to convince people of things they have no business actually believing. He's a marketing genius...and there's nothing wrong with that until he uses that skill to delude Americans who aren't well informed enough to see through it.
