Trump's Big CON: It's Not Tax Reform, It's a Tax Cut for the Wealthy

UPDATE VI:  "Contrary to the president’s claim, the tax plan is not “so bad” for the wealthy. In fact, no matter how you slice it, the superwealthy do rather well under the House GOP proposal. As we have said, that’s largely because they already pay a large chuck of income taxes already.

Trump could actually make the distribution tables look better if he pushed to keep the AMT in place for incomes above $1 million and the estate tax in place for estates larger than $11 million. The failure to do so underscores the fact that this tax plan is not only for the middle class."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s claim that the House GOP bill is ‘so bad for rich people’.

Read also the Washington Post, Who really pays the estate tax?, which notes that roughly 2.7 million Americans will pass away in 2017, but only 11,310 deceased individuals (the top 0.5 percent wealthiest) will need to file an estate tax return.  After deductions, only 5,460 of them will owe any estate tax, and only 80 will be "small" businesses or small farms (worth between $5-10 million). Those 80 "small" businesses or small farms will pay on average $375,000, and they have "the option to pay it off over a period of 15 years, softening its impact."

So Trump's claim that the proposal is 'so bad for rich people' is a lie, but his tax cut proposal will save him and his family billions (yes, billions).

UPDATE V:  "Killing the estate tax has long been the holy grail of Republicans. (They even succeeded in one year, 2010, but then it came back.) So there is little surprise that the tax bill would include an estate-tax repeal.

But what is surprising is that the tax bill also allows the beneficiaries of estates to not pay capital gains taxes on the increase in value of assets held by the estates. That has not been a feature of most previous estate-tax bills. In fact, President Trump’s campaign plan would have repealed the estate tax but taxed capital gains accumulated at death. . .

But the House GOP tax plan, by contrast, kills the estate tax (starting in 2024) and continues to value assets passed to heirs at a stepped-up basis. (The only exception is certain interest in foreign entities, such as a passive foreign investment company.)

[I]t’s interesting that House tax-writers would press forward with an elimination of the estate tax that goes far beyond previous efforts — or even Trump’s campaign tax plan — to allow tens of billions of untapped capital gains to remain beyond the reach of the U.S. government. The money left on the table because of a difference between two words — 'stepped-up' and 'carryover' — is certainly staggering."

Read the Washington Post, Two words in the GOP tax bill mean tens of billions for the superwealthy.

UPDATE IV:  "The Republican tax bill is often described as being weighted toward 'the rich.' But that’s not the full story.

It’s actually weighted toward the loafer, the freeloader, the heir, the passive investor who spends his time yachting and charity-balling.

In short: the idle rich.

Republicans claim the opposite, of course. For years the GOP has argued that we need to cut taxes to incentivize work and job creation. If only today’s allegedly sky-high marginal rates were lower, millions of talented, driven Americans would apply more of their talent and drive toward growing the economy.

Why? Well, if they got to keep more of their hard-earned cash, there would be a greater payoff from clocking that extra hour, taking on that extra project, seeing that extra patient, scoring that extra client, building that extra business, and so on. Working would look more attractive relative to playing an extra round of golf.

Yet the GOP tax bill offers the biggest windfall to those who sit on their duffs and do nothing.

Rich layabouts benefit in multiple ways from the proposal. . .

So much for the dignity of work."

Read the Washington Post, Who wins biggest in the GOP tax plan? The lazy rich.

UPDATE III: "Many of the ideas in the Republican tax proposal unveiled Thursday have found bipartisan support in the past and endorsements from economists who see a way to improve the U.S. economy. That includes plans to make the corporate rate more competitive, simplify personal taxes, curb several tax breaks of dubious value and provide more assistance to working families.

The controversy is over who will gain the most: the rich and corporations. The GOP bill would cut the corporate rate well below previous attempts, eliminate a tax on inheritance that affects only people with many millions of dollars, and take other actions that do not provide direct benefits to most Americans.

And the proposal represents a significant break with previous tax-rewrite discussions.

Republicans have in the past focused on the importance of not adding to the nation’s debt through tax reform. Democrats have favored overhauling the tax code to raise revenue to pay for needed improvements in America’s infrastructure or to provide services for the middle class and poor.

But in this case, Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation estimated Thursday that the tax plan would be paid for by $1.5 trillion in additional borrowing over the next decade. Much of that reflects tax reductions benefiting the wealthy and companies."

Read the Washington Post, The GOP’s bill is ‘a sensible framework’ — but ‘still a deficit-exploding tax cut’ for the rich and corporations.

UPDATE II:  "Judging from the initial details, Republican tax-plan writers have thrown out the idea that they should simplify the code. They’ve also decided that high-six-figure earners and wealthy heirs deserve a tax break. . .

As one might expect, Trump’s plan takes care of himself and his real estate pals: 'Many companies would face a new limit on their interest deductions, which would be capped at 30% of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, which is a measure of cash flow. Real-estate firms and small businesses would be exempt from that limit.'

In short, this is still a bill that directs enormous benefits to the rich and to corporations and hammers middle-class people in high-cost and high-tax states. The complexity of the proposals undercuts its claim to be “tax simplification” while diminishing some pro-growth aspects. It is a bill in which everyone will find something to hate."

Read the Washington Post, Republicans manage to make the tax code more complicated.

UPDATE:  "In 1986, corporations basically footed the bill for individual tax cuts. It's shaping up to be the reverse this time around."

Read the Washington Post, Who’s really going to pay for Trump’s big tax cut?

Republi-CON so-called tax reform "is, in fact, a gigantic giveaway to corporations and the wealthy . . .

The entire purpose of this exercise is to cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations, because it’s a Republican plan and that’s what Republicans do."

Read the Washington Post, Don’t buy the latest spin. The GOP tax plan is still a huge giveaway to the rich., which explains how they are trying to do it.