AP FACT CHECK: Claims About Trump’s Tax Plan Don’t Hold Up
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, in remarks Wednesday, channeled Trump’s penchant for exaggeration. “This is going to be the biggest tax cut and the largest tax reform in the history of our country,” Mnuchin contended.
The headline of the administration’s one-page, double-spaced release made the same claim. At a briefing later, Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn walked that back a bit, calling it “one of the biggest.”
So how ambitious is it?
At first blush, it appears to be smaller than President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 tax cut, the biggest ever. That plan reduced federal revenues by almost 19 percent, according to a Treasury report. In today’s dollars, that would mean a tax cut of more than $600 billion a year or well over $6 trillion over the next decade.
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