The GOP Tax Plan Won’t Help Workers and Small Business
Edward Kleinbard, vox.com
Finally, it might be suggested that only envy can explain my preoccupation — and that of other commentators — with how generous the framework’s business tax cuts are to the most affluent Americans. So long as low- and middle-income taxpayers are also better off, who cares about the largesse at the top? The answers are, first, millions of ordinary Americans in fact will be worse off — as the Tax Policy Center’s preliminary analysis makes clear.
And second, we all have a vital interest in the financial stability of the United States. The tax framework will produce a multitrillion-dollar increase in our deficits by forgoing tax revenues in order to cut taxes on the very must affluent. This spurt in deficits will impede, not accelerate, growth, by increasing the interest rates paid by US businesses. It also will make our ability to respond to the next recession that much more precarious. So, yes, in this case, all of us have a vital interest in not giving away the store to some of us.
To paraphrase Fitzgerald, the ownership of business capital and business capital income is what distinguishes the rich from you and me, and for this reason, the lion’s share of the Trump framework’s multitrillion-dollar business tax cuts cannot help but be captured by the most affluent Americans. This is a tax proposal only Jay Gatsby could love.