Donald Trump cuts Donald Trump’s taxes

This video from the USA says about itself:

Trump Tax Reform Explained

27 September 2017

After failing to repeal and replace Obamacare, Trump is turning to tax reform. Ana Kasparian, Bren Mankiewicz, Michael Shure, the hosts of The Young Turks, show you what’s in his plan. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.

“INDIANAPOLIS — President Trump on Wednesday began a full-throttle push to slash taxes and salvage what is left of his foundering legislative agenda in Congress, proposing a politically challenging array of tax cuts for individuals and businesses that would constitute the most sweeping changes to the federal tax code in decades.

Mr. Trump, smarting from the latest defeat this week of his efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, cast his tax plan as an economic imperative and the fulfillment of a promise to his coalition of working-class supporters to deliver benefits in the form of lower taxes, better jobs and higher wages. But the president offered few details about how working people might benefit from a plan that has explicit and substantial rewards for wealthy people and corporations, including the elimination of taxes on large inheritances and deep reductions in the rates paid by businesses large and small.”

Read more here.

By Bob Lord in the USA:

Trump would personally save billions from his tax cut plan

Saturday 30th September 2017

What’s the largest personal stake a US president has ever had in legislation he signed into law? Whatever it was, it’ll be dwarfed by what Donald Trump’s signature will be worth — to himself — if Congress passes his proposed tax plan and puts it on his desk.

If that happens, Trump will be effectively cutting himself a cheque from the US Treasury for several billion dollars.

Call me cynical, but it seems that’s exactly what Trump has in mind. His plan just fits his tax situation — or what we know of it, without access to his tax returns — too perfectly.

The president’s tax proposal eliminates two taxes that mostly affect the wealthy, and cuts a third tax roughly in half. That would bestow a windfall worth billions on the Trump family.

First, there’s the elimination of the alternative minimum tax, or AMT. The AMT applies to taxpayers whose income tax liability otherwise would be reduced excessively by certain deductions, including deductions commonly claimed by real estate owners like Trump. It’s like an alternative tax system in which the rates are lower but fewer deductions are allowed.

The one glimpse we’ve had of Trump’s tax returns suggests he stands to benefit massively from the repeal of the AMT.

In 2005, Trump’s income exceeded $150 million, but his regular tax liability was just $5.3m — that’s barely a 3.5 per cent tax rate.

But the AMT increased Trump’s tax liability that year by over $31m.

Had Trump’s tax plan been in effect in 2005, it would’ve saved him that $31m.

Still, that’s chump change in comparison to the tax windfall he hopes to bestow upon himself by cutting the top tax rate on the bulk of his income by more than half, from nearly 40 per cent to 15.

We’re not talking about the corporate tax rate here. Trump could reap a tidy personal benefit from slashing the corporate income tax too, but the far bigger prize in his plan is its treatment of income from businesses that don’t pay corporate taxes.

Under current law, the income of those businesses is taxed to their owners at individual income tax rates. Under Trump’s plan, income from those businesses would receive preferential tax treatment, with a maximum tax rate of 15 per cent.

That would be the final act in turning US tax policy on its head.

In 1980, before Ronald Reagan’s election, the maximum rate on workers’ wages — earned income — was less than the maximum rate applicable to all other types of income except long-term capital gains.

Under Trump’s tax plan, the maximum tax rate workers pay, after accounting for employment taxes, will be higher than the rate applicable to any other type of income.

That means no matter how Trump invests his billions — in property, bonds, stocks, business ventures, etc — the income he generates would be taxed at a rate lower than what workers pay on their wages.

Trump’s preferential rate for business income is unprecedented. Is it a coincidence that the first politician to propose it just happens to be a real estate magnate with interests in literally hundreds of unincorporated businesses?

The biggest tax windfall Trump hopes to secure for himself, however, is one he won’t live to enjoy. I’m referring to inheritance tax of course — a federal levy on estates worth over $5.5m for individuals.

Trump’s plan would eliminate that tax, no matter how large the estate. For Trump, that would mean as much as $1.4 billion on an estate estimated by Forbes at $3.5bn.

The bottom line: If Trump’s tax plan passes, he’ll have secured for himself billions in tax benefits in less than a year as president. Not bad work if you can get it, huh?

This article appeared at Peoplesworld.org. Bob Lord is a tax lawyer and former Congressional candidate, is an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. He previously served as an adjunct faculty member at the Arizona State University School of Law. Lord’s work focuses on the relationship of tax law to inequality.

Surprise! Non-Partisan Analysis Finds Trump Tax Plan Primarily Rewards Top 1%. The plan would also raise taxes for many middle class families, a fact Americans for Tax Fairness denounced as “absolutely outrageous”: here.

Under Trump, the swamp takes to the air — in private jets — and the public pays: here.

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