Trump and the GOP are rigging our tax system for the rich. This new report explains how.
By Helaine Olen December 18 at 2:12 PM
Trump administration officials and congressional Republicans spent the past weekend continuing to insist that their tax reform plan is all about helping the middle class and making the tax system simpler and easier to navigate. President Trump’s “priority all along is [to] fix a broken system,” said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on “Face the Nation,” adding that the plan is all about helping the “middle class” and “working families.”
Au contraire. What Trump and congressional Republicans will really accomplish if their plan becomes law is to further rig the tax system in favor of the wealthiest Americans.
A new report from a group of 13 prominent tax experts including Lily Batchelder at New York University School of Law and distributed by the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities provides the most detailed explanation yet of how this bill will encourage the wealthy to pursue all sorts of tactics in service of what accountants call “tax avoidance.” This is, of course, almost certainly not what most voters thought they were getting when Trump promised to “drain the swamp” during last year’s presidential campaign.
The report claims the bill would encourage use of corporate tax shelters, incentivize high-income people to turn themselves into businesses to obtain lower-income tax rates, and encourage runarounds solely designed to help individuals owe less money to the federal government at the end of the year.
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/12/18/trump-and-the-gop-are-rigging-our-tax-system-for-the-rich-this-new-report-explains-how/?utm_term=.f410b92d86d8
When the scam takes full effect, expect howls of "we must get the deficit under control' from these same repukes...
