Don’t Cut Taxes—Simplify the Code Instead

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American Greatness

. Don’t Cut Taxes—Simplify the Code Instead

By Spencer P. Morrison| November 17, 2017

The Republicans’ proposed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is the archetypical tax reform bill: it lowers taxes but increases their complexity. High taxes are bad, but a complex tax code is worse. America deserves better.

 This is not to say that high taxes are not a problem. They are. America is one of themost heavily taxed jurisdictions in the developed world, and high taxes are the main reason why so many firms move their head offices out of the United States and into low-tax jurisdictions such as Canada or Ireland. The corporate inversion epidemic is made in Washington, D.C. High taxes also hurt individuals: according to the Tax Foundation, taxes cost Americans more out-of-pocket earnings than do shelter, clothing, and food combined. Tax cuts are a must.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act largely delivers on this front. The legislation would slash the corporate tax rate from 35 to 20 percent, reduce the number of individual income tax brackets, and double the basic personal deduction, which will let people shield more of their income from Uncle Sam. And perhaps most important, the bill would remove loopholes that allow illegal aliens to collect some $23 billion in tax credits annually (yes, you read that right).   

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The Tax Bill

 

Via Ryan 

 Raise The Black Flag

The federal tax reform coming out of Congress, spearheaded by the White House Office of Management & Budget and Congressional Republicans, masterfully eliminates state and local tax deductions, which amounts to a huge tax hike on Democratic blue states from the Northeast to Illinois to the Left Coast, shifting the beneficiaries of the federal income tax cut primarily to the GOP political base in low-tax GOP-majority states.

 

Thisis black flag politics in an age of schadenfreude right out of Steve Bannon’s playbook and would make Niccoli Machiavelli blush! The political Right is taking Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals’ prescriptive counsel to heart and turning it on its head for ultra-conservative ends.

 

Posted by Brock Townsend at Saturday, November 18, 2017