Five crucial points on tax reform

I suggest reading the whole article at the link below.

By Jay Bookman
November 2, 2017

1.) The GOP plan is predicated on the claim that American corporations are so overtaxed that they can no longer turn a sufficient profit or compete internationally, and that investors lack the incentive to invest. That’s the justification for dropping the current top corporate tax rate of 35 percent all the way down to 20 percent, with little effective effort to close loopholes.

That claim is pure, self-serving myth. Here’s the reality:

The reality is that since the turn of the millenium, corporate AFTER-TAX profits have quadrupled from already historic highs. To put it mildly, that does not suggest a corporate sector strangled by overtaxation.

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2.) By their own admission, the Republican tax plan will increase the national debt by $1.5 trillion in the next decade. Nonpartisan analysts such as the Tax Policy Center put the number at more like $2.5 trillion. Those increases are over and above the substantial debt increases that are already baked into the nation’s financial cake, increases that Republicans have previously depicted as posing a serious, even existential threat to the American economy.

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3.) The debt increase would be substantially worse if not for the $1.4 trillion that the GOP plan cuts over the next decade from Medicare and Medicaid, just as the baby-boom generation moves into its retirement years.

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“Taxpayer groups in the bottom 95 percent of the income distribution would see modest tax cuts, averaging 1.2 percent of after-tax income or less,” predicts the Tax Policy Center. “The benefit would be largest for taxpayers in the top 1 percent (those making more than $730,000), who would see their after-tax income increase 8.5 percent.”

By 2027, the TPC estimates, the top 1 percent would be collecting 79.7 percent of the benefits of the tax cuts.

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5.) This major tax reform is being handled in much the same fashion as the GOP’s attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare. It has been written in secret, without the participation, input or knowledge of Democrats or even of most Republicans. There have been no hearings, no transparency, no outside input.

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