Leave it to Republicans to blow a huge hole in the deficit—and not care.
It’s a huge tax cut for some people, but if you’re middle class or upper-middle class you could end up paying hundreds more in taxes AKA Paul Ryan can’t do math.
Lawrence O’Donnel pointed out last night that the lowest earners will actually have their taxes raised from 10% to 12%.
This ought to be very popular with the hoi polloi. They will no doubt be forever *indebted to Congress for doing the right thing and cutting taxes 4.2% for the most deserving (millionaires and billionaires). Oh, how they suffer so.
*pun intended
Cohn at Press conference: “Guys like myself should not be allowed to move our assets…and lower our tax rate from 35 to 25”,
“unless they can afford to pay accountants and lawyers like mine”, he continued.
</snark>
Jim Stewart, Pulitzer business journo, was on this morning excoriating the tax scam. I just found out that they are proposing eliminating the personal exemption, which along with the State tax deductibility makes the idea of it helping the Middle Class a total joke. Furthermore it looks like all the guys my wisecrack above talks about can become LLCs and dodge the taxes. Meanwhile a lot of the realtors are dreading what the scam will do to first-time homeowners. Cohn’s answer to this was bullshit.
So if we join the chorus of the un-fooled we can scuttle this POS.
The ambitious tax plan would lower rates for businesses and tax plans.
Oh. Does it lower rates for itself?
This is leveling the playing field, GOP style. It isn’t fair that hedge fund managers can lower their taxes by converting ordinary income into long term capital gains through carried interest. We have to lower the income tax on pass through entities so other high income earners enjoy the same tax dodge.
Exactly. And don’t forget the added sizzle for the “I’m gonna be rich SOMEDAY” crowd, much more numerous. Not everybody has a realistic expectation of becoming a hedge-fund manager. But countless occupations can fuel a dream of “Me, L.L.C”
This is a scaled-back version of what they did in Kansas, where they also promised that not everybody would just be able to turn themselves into a small business and avoid taxation. They lied there too.
The new budget plan permits the upcoming tax measure to add $1.5 trillion over the coming decade to the $20 trillion national debt.
This line misleadingly implies that the Senate would allow the debt to grow from $20 trillion now to $21.5 trillion in 10 years.
If I understand budget-scoring correctly, that is far from true. The budget impact is measured against current law, which, if I recall correctly, is expected to result in a debt increase of $9-10 trillion over the next decade.
Call it $9 trillion, and the more informative statement would be: The CBO projects US debt to rise from $20 trillion today to $29 trillion in ten years; the Senate plan would allow an additional $1.5 trillion increase in the debt to $30.5 trillion.
Edited to add: The CBO projections I recall were from before the massive DOD budget increase. Add those to large tax cuts, and Trumpp could be approaching a $1 trillion annual deficit in budgets proposed during his fourth year in office.
If they pass anything like the plan being floated around, the $1.5 trillion headspace will be gone in 5 years or less.
That’s Conservative Economics–prove something will fail on the state level, then propose a nationwide rollout. When you can’t even get your own Congress to vote for it, say “It woulda worked!”
The calculations are based on dynamic scoring - the underlying premise of which is that trickle down actually works and that the increase in GDP and new revenues will offset the otherwise $2 trillion (additional) deficit that will be created. As already pointed out, Kansas is a case example of how bad this can be. Trickle down economics (voodoo economics?) is like giving the horses more hay in order to feed the birds. So much for the party of fiscal responsibility.
Actually, the rise from a rate of 10% to 12% = a raise of 20%.
Of course he can do math, but only so it adds up for the “right” people.
Just 4.2%? You’re not counting the elimination of the estate tax and the AMT. This would be the fking mother of all windfalls for the millionaires and billionaires and all their descendants, and the fulfillment of Paul Ryan’s wildest dreams.
I think you misread what I wrote. I never addressed the percentage of increase, only the percent reduction for the top rate. Just sayin’.
You’re right. I didn’t address that. Just the percentage decrease. But there’s even more to it than you cite.
Shrubya said it best when he noted [paraphrased] “Rich people don’t pay taxes anyway because they can afford to hire expensive accountants.”
Yup; and turn themselves into companies (pass-throughs/LLCs…). And of course, we know that corporations (which will also get a sweet deal if this passes) are people…
Damn liberals. The poor get more and the wealthy have to make do with less.
Americans in the 80th-95th percentiles get almost no benefit. Even the most cynical slave to the billionaire donors knows you need to give that group something.