Tax Reform: A Twitterized Guide

I have no idea whether ‘twitterized’ is a word or not, but if not it should be.  Breaking with my own blogging tendency toward verbosity, I will present here everything you need to know about the Republican tax reform ‘plan’ in 140 (or so) words.

The plan:

• Reduce the number of tax brackets and the rate applied to each.
• Drastically lower the corporate tax rate
• Increase the standard deduction
• Reduced tax rate for pass-through businesses (look it up;  I’m running out of words)
• Eliminate the estate tax
• Eliminate many personal deductions and business tax breaks

Winners and losers?  It’s of course impossible to say without the details.  But here’s what can be said more or less unequivocally:

• Four of the six components noted above will definitely benefit affluent Americans disproportionately.  Only the doubling of the standard deduction will clearly benefit lower and middle classes disproportionately.
• The tax cuts would reduce federal revenue by somewhere between $3.5 trillion and $7.8 trillion over 10 years (Tax Policy Center).

Fundamental takeaways (cutting through all the inevitable political rhetoric to the contrary):

• The overall ‘plan’ will be highly regressive (rich guys win)
• It will significantly exacerbate the national debt.  

What’s not to like?

Author: garygram

I spent my career as an economics professor and administrator at universities in New York, Texas, Florida and the United Arab Emirates. Since some part-time consulting in 2013-14 in Qatar, I have been retired with my spouse in Hilton Head's naturally spectacular Moss Creek community. My current passions are public policy, music, tennis, grandkids, community service (I currently serve on the Moss Creek Board of Directors), the Nebraska Cornhuskers and now blog writing, not necessarily in that order. While I will always attempt in my blog writing to be objective and evidence-grounded, it will probably become apparent that I am what is typically today called Progressive, a status that seems quickly to be coming back into favor. View all posts by garygram