Come on! Who here is surprised?
I finally saw a copy of Trump’s tax pamphlet. There’s even less there than the news reports imply. Almost all of it is campaign fluff:
- “Grow the economy and create millions of jobs.” What, by sheer force of will?
- “Provide tax relief to American families, especially middle-class families.” Kinda hoped he’d be more specific.
- “Simplify our burdensome tax code.” Hell, at this point I’ll give him mercy points just for using ‘burdensome’ in a sentence.
Then he repeats himself with a new section: “Provide tax relief to American families, especially middle-class families”. Damn, it was already double-spaced with huge margins, and he still has to repeat himself to get a full page?
Anyway, there are three bullet points:
- “Reduce the seven tax brackets to three tax brackets of 10%, 25% and 35%.” Since he doesn’t say what incomes go with which bracket, that could be a tax increase for all I can tell. Papers who pretend they know what that means are simply lying.
- “Doubling the standard deduction.” That one’s actually clear, and it’s progressive.
It shines! The light hurts my eyes!
Where was I?
- “Providing tax relief for families with child and dependent care expenses.” Notice Trump is not saying child expenses will be deductible.
So he included one proposal that actually means something and two that don’t. He goes on with the next section: “Simplification,” although instead of simplification, it only has really big tax cuts that benefit rich people like crazy.
And here, Trump’s pamphlet suddenly gets more specific and detailed:
- “Eliminate targeted tax breaks that mainly benefit the wealthiest taxpayers.” That’s actually tough to parse, but the next line helps.
- “Protect the home ownership and charitable gift tax deductions.”
First, this shows that if Trump wanted to make child expenses deductible, he knows how to write the words.
Second, he says we should kill “targeted tax breaks”, except not the two most popular ones. Check.
- “Repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax.” Hard not to notice that the AMT is probably the only federal tax that Trump actually pays.
- “Repeal the death tax.” Why focus on the Estate tax? It’s one of the few taxes that Trump can expect to pay some time in the future. And even though he’ll be dead, he’s still pissed about that.
None of these are ‘simplifications’, of course. The AMT is pretty damn simple already. Killing some of the more esoteric tax breaks might make things simpler for really complex returns — like his — but most people don’t use those.
Last bullet under “Individual Reform”?
- “Repeal the 3.8% Obamacare tax that hits small businesses and investment income.”
Because that business tax is a big issue for most middle-class families. Although it is a big deal for hyper-rich people like Trump.
At the end, Trump has a short section called “Business Reform” that does what you’d expect:
- “15% business tax rate.”
Most big media fixated on this, saying Trump must have meant the Corporate tax rate, which currently tops out at 35%. The New York Times called it the ‘centerpiece’ of Trump’s proposal.
Gotta squint hard to see that conclusion in that short bullet.
- “Territorial tax system to level the playing field for American companies.”
No idea, but I feel a tug on my wallet.
- “One-time tax on trillions of dollars held overseas.”
OK, I do know what that last one is about.
Foreign corporate profits are taxed when the money comes into the US. Many dodgy companies squirrel their income overseas — usually in tax haven banks — and wait. Every decade or so, Republicans will propose a tax holiday, with much, much lower tax rates, claiming they’re helping the economy recover that ‘lost’ money. All these semi-criminal enterprises then get to transfer all their deferred profits, escape possible prosecution, and get away with only paying a fraction of their tax bill. Such a deal!
Anyone remember that most of Trump’s cabinet either use offshore tax haven banks extensively, control them, or both? Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was both a Vice President and the majority shareholder in the Bank of Cyprus, the bank that Paul Manafort used to launder his money. Along with most of the Russian oilgarchs.
So, anyone want to bet that Trump’s operation controls a bunch of front companies and shell corporations with deferred income hiding in offshore banks? Propping up another “one-time tax” would ease the last category of tax that Trump might actually pay.
So Trump wrote a pamphlet on the bus to school. Even though it only needed to be a page — around a hundred words — he still had fill it with fluff and repetitions. And yet, Trump still finds room to propose reducing or eliminating every tax that Trump actually pays. Though we’ll never really know, since he hides his taxes.
Huh. Who’d have thought?
