How Republicans misled the American public on their tax bill

[tulc]

How Republicans misled the American public on their tax bill

“Believe me,” Trump said. “This is going to cost me a fortune, this thing,” he insisted at a rally in Missouri earlier this year.

Trump and his administration have continued to insist that that high earners would not benefit from this tax bill. The “rich will not be gaining at all” with the tax bill, Trump said — a sentiment Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin repeated over the weekend.

This is not true. In fact, Trump will personally be gaining from this tax bill. A core change in the Republican tax bill is how it addresses “pass-through” businesses, like LLCs, partnerships, sole proprietorships, and S corporations — the Trump Organization, for example — that are taxed as personal income.

Current law puts the top individual tax rate at 39.6 percent. This bill reduces the rate to 37 percent, and gives pass-through entities a 20 percent deduction, extending it to real estate investors like Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

The Trump Organization is a large pass-through; it is a holding company for golf courses and hotels and pulls in about $9.5 billion in annual revenue. But because it is exempt from the corporate income tax, and its profits are instead taxed upon distribution to shareholders, this new tax break for pass-throughs is a huge win for the Trump family — and the many other businesspeople who structure their companies like this.

tulc(is wondering: when this is shown to be a complete disaster how long before the Republicans blame the Democrats for all of it?)

 

[TheBibleIsTruth]

How Republicans misled the American public on their tax bill

tulc(is wondering: when this is shown to be a complete disaster how long before the Republicans blame the Democrats for all of it?)

are the Democrats any better?

 

[Basil the Great]

The American public does not take the time needed to thoroughly investigate the major issues of the day. I guess that is to be expected. Most people lead busy lives of their own. Still, for a democratic government to work at it's best, we need more citizen involvement.

 

[Sistrin]

Actual thread title should read: "How someone else said how Republicans misled the American public on their tax bill because I am just regurgitating every piece of anti-Trump garbage out there."

 

[tulc]

Actual thread title should read: "How someone else said how Republicans misled the American public on their tax bill because I am just regurgitating every piece of anti-Trump garbage out there."

If you'd like to write that article and get it published you could post it here and start a thread with it. Which would be cool, but till then we should probably just stick with what's in the OP and not what the headline is.
tulc(just a suggestion)

 

[tulc]

are the Democrats any better?

I don't think that's in the OP but if you would like to discuss that perhaps you also should start a thread about that then people could discuss it there.
tulc(just a suggestion 2, the sequel to post #4)

 

[hedrick]

The president lying about the impact on him is normal. I think by now everyone who cares knows to expect that. We shouldn't evaluate the tax cut based on that.

My reading of articles from the NYT is that on average it is actually is a tax cut for all tax brackets, though for some people it increases taxes, particularly in blue states. To me the real questions are:
* are the small cuts worth the huge increase in debt
* most of the cut is to business. Will that really produce the level of benefits it's claimed to?

Most economists seem to feel the answer is no on both questions. I'm concerned because we have lots of infrastructure needs, and this seems to have made it impossible to address them. If we're going to increase the deficit by $1.5T I'd rather see it go to roads, railroad tracks, bridges, and other places we desperately need investment. If we can't do that during the up part of an economic cycle, we're going to fall apart.

 

[hedrick]

There's one other problem: I'm seeing a lot of articles talking about huge new loopholes opened by the new law. There's good reason to think that the actual deficit will be a lot larger than the official projection.

 

[hedrick]

A lot of the talk about impact on individuals is because the individual cuts are temporary. But I think the Republican answer is right: there's no intent to actually do that. If we had a Republican government in 2029, they'd extend the cuts. I have no idea how they'd pay for them: probably cut Medicaid and maybe even Social Security. Or maybe just grow the deficit.

But by 2028 we will almost certainly have a Democratic government. Probably by 2020 or at latest 2024. It's really, really unlikely that what this bill implies for 2029 will actually happen. I certainly hope most of the bill will be reversed, because there are too many things that need the money.