Posted on 11/27/2017 10:55:44 PM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
The current GOP tax plan sitting in front of Congress has problems. If a true-blue lifelong conservative tax cut evangelist like me is not sold 110 percent, something is very wrong.
I’m a Ronald Reagan-Barry Goldwater-Jack Kemp conservative. I’ve been preaching tax cuts since third grade. Until now, I’ve never in my life met a tax cut I didn’t support!
My goals are simple- more power and money to the people that earned it (taxpayers and business owners) and less money for the greedy, wasteful government.
That’s why it pains me to say the current GOP tax plan is not what politicians and tax experts claim it is.
This doesn’t mean I won’t support it. I can still be convinced if several changes take place in the negotiations between the GOP House and Senate. But it means I’m disappointed because this could have been great. This could have been Reagan- Part Deux. This could have really saved small business and the middle class.
The problem is Congress ruins everything it touches. Just like the repeal of Obamacare. They could have simply voted to kill Obamacare. Instead, they made the repeal a trillion-dollar mess no one understood. So, it failed. Well don’t look now, but the stupid GOP Congress has done it again.
Why didn’t the GOP keep it simple? The goal of cutting taxes is two-fold.
A) Make the economy explode upward by allowing people to keep more of their own money.
B) Win elections, because voters are so thankful for the extra money and the prosperous economy.
All the GOP had to do was cut taxes across the board by 10 percent this year, 10 percent next year (2018), 10 percent in the third year (2019). Give the tax cut to everyone. Keep it simple. Make everyone jump for joy. Do that, and Americans would be walking into voting booths with more money in their hands for the next two elections. The GOP would win in landslides in both 2018 and 2020.
The most important rule of business is: “KISS- Keep It Simple Stupid.” Instead, the stupid GOP Congress made this tax plan so complicated; even I have no idea what’s in it, or what the effect will be on my taxes.
First, GOP politicians are trying to convince us this is a huge tax cut. Reagan cut taxes dramatically from 70 percent to 28 percent. He didn’t cut them from 39 percent to a lousy 35 percent.
Secondly, this tax plan barely cuts tax rates for individuals, but in return, it cuts a ton of deductions. Important deductions. Mortgage interest. State income taxes. Property taxes. Medical expenses. Student loan interest. And how about this doozy- it dramatically changes the way alimony is counted towards taxes.
So, is this really a “tax cut?” If I save $5000 a year in taxes based on lower rates, but pay $10,000 a year more based on reduced deductions, how is that a “tax cut?” Sounds like a tax raise to me. And when people figure this out a year from now, they aren’t going to vote Republican.
Here are the big problems.
*If a 35 percent corporate tax rate is far too high for big business, so high that companies are moving out of America, why is a 35 percent tax rate just fine and dandy for individuals?
*If you lower our taxes a little, but take away most of our deductions, how is that a “tax cut” at all? Sounds to me like this is “revenue neutral," which means you’re not actually cutting our taxes.
*If you’re giving a 20 percent tax rate to big business to encourage economic growth, spending and job creation, why not for small business, or individuals?
*Why are you making the gigantic tax cut for corporations permanent, while the tiny tax cut for individuals is temporary? Does anyone notice this?
*If eliminating the deduction for state and local taxes is such a fantastic idea for individuals, why are you leaving that exact deduction in for corporations?
*If a homeowner has a $20,000 property tax bill, but can’t deduct it anymore, you’re asking them to pay taxes on money they don’t have. How is that helping the economy?
*Why is the cut for individuals so small? Why are you only cutting the top rate from 39 percent to 35 percent (and making that tiny cut temporary)? Is this because you’re giving away 75 percent of the money to a gigantic permanent cut to big business, and leaving crumbs for the rest of us?
*Why are you making this so darn complicated? Why don’t you just cut everyone’s taxes across the board?
*I’ve saved the most important for last. The claim is there’s a fantastic new special 25 percent tax rate for small businessmen like me. Great! This is what President Trump wanted from day one. This is the main reason I’d support this new tax plan. Except I’ve come to find out the new lower tax rate only applies to 30 percent of a small businessman’s income. The other 70 percent gets taxed at the highest personal rate. Really?
That’s your “big idea” to save small business? Small business creates 2/3rds of all new private sector jobs. How is giving us a special 25 percent tax rate on only 30 percent of our income putting small business on an equal footing with big business, who gets a permanent 20 percent tax rate on 100 percent of their income?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m looking for reasons to support this GOP tax plan. I’m looking for reasons to sell it to the millions of conservatives who listen to my national radio show on USA Radio and my national TV show on Newsmax TV.
If changes are made to lower tax rates for individuals; to apply the special tax rate for small business to 100 percent of their income; to restore crucial tax deductions like the mortgage interest deduction, property tax deduction and medical expenses deduction; I could be persuaded to give my full support to this GOP tax plan.
But if someone like me, who has never before in his life questioned a tax cut plan, has significant issues and concerns, it’s a safe bet that I speak for millions of conservatives. This bill has huge problems.
Let’s make it more conservative. Let’s aim it at small business and individuals, not just big business. Let’s make it more Goldwater/Reagan/Kemp.
Because until you do that, this tax cut evangelist warns this GOP tax plan doesn’t really cut taxes. At least not for the people that matter- GOP voters.
its pathetic....
and yes I did notice that corp. taxes are PERMANENT while the pittance they allow the workers to keep is in flux....
this is a big joke...a big joke...
Full of poison pills. Just like Ryan, McConnell and Kevin Brady want it.
This thing sucks. Congress is an enemy of America.
My tax plan is simple:
Raise the standard deduction to $24,000 per individual, leave SALT deductions alone, end the estate tax, set corporate and pass-through at 25%, adjust other brackets as needed to make the math work, and make it all retroactive by one year.
> *Why are you making the gigantic tax cut for corporations permanent, while the tiny tax cut for individuals is temporary? Does anyone notice this?
Anyone paying attention noticed this.
https://taxfoundation.org/permanent-corporate-rate-cut-temporary-individual-tax-cut/
Senate lawmakers faced a dilemma in having to balance the multiple goals of crafting a tax reform plan that maximized economic growth, delivered middle-class tax cuts, and comported with an internal Senate rule, the Byrd Rule. This rule, named after the late West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, prohibits tax and spending bills from increasing the federal deficit beyond the ten-year budget window.
The Byrd Rule is intended to prevent budget gimmicks that circumvent the budget resolutions by back-loading tax cuts so that they may meet the ten-year revenue mandates in the budget resolutions but deliver big tax cuts later. Unfortunately, the effect of the Byrd Rule is to make many permanent tax changes difficult to enact.
To comply with the Byrd Rule, the Finance Committee faced a choice: It could sunset all or some of the tax cuts at the end of ten years, in the same way that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts were designed to expire in 2011 and 2013, or offset those future tax cuts by raising other taxes or closing additional loopholes.
None of these options are optimal.
> *If a 35 percent corporate tax rate is far too high for big business, so high that companies are moving out of America, why is a 35 percent tax rate just fine and dandy for individuals?
The corporate tax is ‘far too high’ because they are competing with other nations companies that have lower rates.
Not the case with individuals.
Trump supporters are not idiots but the questions he’s asking seems to assume they are. ??
Yesterday's Congress cannot tell today's what to do. The Senate can do as it pleases, and, if the House and DJT agree, it's the law. Byrd Rule or not.
A GOP congress with a GOP president should have slashed spending as well. But congress rejected all the spending cuts Trump tepidly proposed earlier this year.
> *If you lower our taxes a little, but take away most of our deductions, how is that a “tax cut” at all?
Because they double the standard deduction.
•30.1 percent of households chose to itemize their deductions (44 million returns).
•68.5 percent of households chose to take the standard deduction (101 million returns).
By doubling the standard deduction, look for that 68.5% who take the standard deduction to increase significantly.
Some upper income taxpayers in mainly blue states will likely pay more.
AND - news flash - 900,000 ‘poor’ will pay more in taxes - because the tax foundation predicts 900,000 new jobs will be created.
Why should government always get bigger?
That is the purpose of Base Line Budgeting; to ensure that government never gets smaller due to inflation.
"Baseline budgeting" is one of those Washington terms that sounds very dry and boring. In reality, baseline budgeting is one of the most sinister ways that politicians claim to cut spending when they are actually increasing spending. The Congressional Budget Office defines the baseline as a benchmark for measuring the budgetary effects of proposed changes in federal revenue or spending, with the assumption that current budgetary policies or current services are continued without change. The baseline includes automatic adjustments for inflation and anticipated increases in program participation. Baseline, or current services, budgeting, therefore builds automatic, future spending increases into Congress's budgetary forecasts.
If we could kill Base Line Budgeting it would make it harder to continuously grow government.
*Why are you making this so darn complicated? Why don’t you just cut everyone’s taxes across the board?
*I’ve saved the most important for last. The claim is there’s a fantastic new special 25 percent tax rate for small businessmen like me. Great! This is what President Trump wanted from day one. This is the main reason I’d support this new tax plan. Except I’ve come to find out the new lower tax rate only applies to 30 percent of a small businessman’s income. The other 70 percent gets taxed at the highest personal rate. Really?
That’s your “big idea” to save small business? Small business creates 2/3rds of all new private sector jobs. How is giving us a special 25 percent tax rate on only 30 percent of our income putting small business on an equal footing with big business, who gets a permanent 20 percent tax rate on 100 percent of their income?
I have an idea. Don't tax businesses at all! Let business profits go untaxed until distributed out to individuals as dividends. It shouldn't matter to a small business owner whether his income is from a salary he pays himself or from the profits of his business.
That simplifies things a lot. Then the argument is over what the individual rate or rates should be. No more double taxation of profits paid out as dividends.
Well, the corporate rate cut, the new rules on expensing business investment, and the potential to bring ashore hordes of cash generated off-shore all have the potential to goose economic growth and increase wages.
Hopefully, the resulting mood of the electorate will be such that the GOP keeps the House and gets a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. That will finally make it possible to do tax reform right! Then, in 2020, the Donald wins reelection handily, the Jack-Ass Party having been driven into oblivion!
That's the best spin I can put on at this time, given the GOP's talent for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
The only path to restoration working within the system is to wait it out and pray that Bannon’s America First campaign is divinely successful come November 2018.
Only with a Patriot-dominated Congress will MAGA become a reality.
Therefore, this current batch of Congressional traitors can hem and haw and delay right up to the midterms, and it’s just fine with me.
Its important that we not allow anyone to tell us how great this tax plan is and that because of it, we should re-elect our Republican members of the House and Senate in 2018.
Its a tax plan coupled with an unwillingness to cut spending and the intention to raise the debt ceiling even more.
The new defintion of “ rich”
Anyone who itemizes deductions
Im going to bet that “ only” 30% of us itemize but we pay 70% or more of the taxes
But then we itemizers who get a tax increase? Well its our own damn fault for living in a “ blue” state and being “ subsidized” by red staters - right?
Another divide and conquer argument
...”Full of poison pills. Just like Ryan, McConnell and Kevin Brady want it.
This thing sucks. Congress is an enemy of America.”...
Is it true that the budget includes new spending that will eventually swell the deficit to 60 Trillion? A very brilliant CEO type told my husband that yesterday. Hope it is fake news!
I think it’s just as likely that the GOP rewards its donors and screws the middle class and then loses the HOR in 2018 and rids itself of President DJT by 2019. It’s just winning all around for the GOPe this way. They get their tax cut. They get rid of President Donald J. Trump and they can go back to going along to get along.
GOPe tax plan to insure DJT does not get re-elected ...
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