GOP "Tax Reform Plan" for America: Mostly for Their Selective High-Roller BFF's

Page from this “Businessman's Playbook” 
(As Rick Perry would say: Oops) 

Hands Down Worst “Stand-up” Comedy Show Ever

Middle-class tax cut delivered as promised, right boys
(Bet cher ass we did wink/wink)

Two Updates (November 13, 2017):

The first update is quite long yet very detailed in asking and answering this question from the Washington Post here:

Q: Why are Republicans rushing tax reform through? 

A: So voters don't find out who loses. 

The Post Article Title: “Little wonder the Republicans are trying to speed this tax bill through the process. The more questions voters ask about it, the more uncomfortable it’s going to get for them.”

The second update:  This comes alongside or on top of the Krugman piece that follows. And, yes, this story is fast-moving and rightly so — we need to see as much as possible there is about this GOP tax scam or more apt, another Trump con for it is: Just that; a scam and a con. These updates, all side-by-side, give the best in-depth analyses of the GOP “Tax Reform Plan” (you know, the joke of the day as it were). This second update comes from The Hill – here are the juicy parts:

We started with the reform of the tax code; four tax rates instead of five. A simpler and fairer tax code. On the corporate side, a rate cut from 35 percent to 20 percent. Small business went from 39.6 to 25; seems almost simple.

Then “The Swamp” rises up and members of the House and Senate get in the way with their special interests and issues.

Specifics (my notes added for emphasis):

*  Now we see a grab bag of goodies for the uber-wealthy globalists while passing the price tag on to the middle and upper-middle classes in America.

*  We've gone from tax reform to tax deform.

*  The Real Estate depreciation part of the Senate bill proposes moving the time frame from 39 years to 25 years on depreciation. This is a major gift to billionaire real estate owners that will cost the Treasury upwards of $5.8 trillion (and has the potential for creating another real estate bubble).

*  The Senate bill pushed the corporate tax cut back a year, or the small business tax went up to 30 percent – why? When you're giving such a massive break to a small handful of people, you have to screw others, like small businesses, corporations and by extension the shareholders. This will also result in 401(k) plans losing value by pushing the corporate tax cut.

*  The carried interest loophole that somehow managed to be avoided in either the House or the Senate plan. Trump ran on that loophole. What is it: A certain class of money managers and investors have avoided the 39.6 percent tax bracket and instead pay at the 20 percent tax bracket by claiming their compensation is capital gains and not income.

*  Neither the House nor Senate versions of tax reform close those kinds of loopholes. They are still gaping holes for the favored class with friends in high places, like Gary Cohn and Steven Mnuchin and Jared Kushner, et al, who were instrumental in helping frame the bill (surprise, surprise, surprise, um?).

*  Cohn  and Mnuchin both are Goldman Sachs alumni. Why wouldn't they want to help their chums back on Wall Street? Or perhaps members on the Hill, both Democrats and Republicans, thus protecting campaign donors?

(After all, what swamp dwellers wants to bite the hand that feeds them campaign and party contributions)?

*  Almost half of all Americans don't pay income tax (only about 46 percent file returns) – why? Many of those people who don't file are poor and the tax code exempts them. (But, keep in mind, everyone pays something in taxes, whether sales tax, fuel taxes, state taxes, etc.).

To recap (three main points in this fine article):

1.  Trump proposed a simpler, flatter tax code, one that truly benefited the working middle class. There are claims floating about that many in middle and upper-middle class would initially be dinged by the tax reform. But have no worries, eventually they'll see about $1,300 more a year in their bank accounts, or about $125 per month.

2.  That pales in comparison to the tens of millions the uber-wealthy and the likes of Kushner, Cohn, Mnuchin along with this all-Republican Congress pushed through this bill will pocket huge amounts of money while claiming they helped “the little guy)..

3.  For there to be real tax reform, there has to be a noticeable net gain for Americans in their paychecks, but much more than $125 per month.

I conclude that the Cohn, Mnuchin, Kushner, and Trump crowd talk a good game but play lousy game for the players other than themselves.

Thanks for stopping by and being a good tax-paying American like the 90 plus percent of us. 

Feels good, um?

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From Paul Krugman at the NY Times – also an earlier Krugman analysis here (you might read it first and then this update).  This update highlights various winners and losers (more losers than winners) in this proposed GOP tax reform plan:

ONE VERY TOP WINNER EXAMPLE:

“A very lucky individual — let’s arbitrarily call him Eric Trump — who stands to inherit a stake in a business he doesn’t run, plus a bunch of stock. He’ll get his inheritance tax-free, because the estate tax gets phased out in the GOP bill. He’ll get to pay a low tax rate on his business income. And his stocks will pay higher dividends, because the GOP bill also sharply cuts corporate tax rates, and most of the benefit of those cuts will probably flow to shareholders.”

“So when Gary Cohn, Trump’s top economic adviser, says that the bill’s goal is “to deliver middle-class tax cuts to the hard-working families in this country,” he’s claiming that up is down and black is white. This bill does little or nothing for the middle class, and even among the affluent it’s biased against those who work hard in favor of the idle rich.”

“Also let’s not forget that tax increases on working Americans are only part of the story. This bill would also, according to the CBO, add $1.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. You know what that means: If this bill or anything like it passes, Republicans will immediately revert to their previous pretense of being deficit hawks and start demanding spending cuts.”

“And since federal spending is dominated by programs — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — that benefit the middle and working classes, the end result of this tax bill would be to leave most working Americans, even those who wouldn’t face direct tax increases, worse off, all for the benefit of a tiny minority, especially those who haven’t even worked for their wealth.”

Continue at the link above. Also, as I mentioned this earlier Krugman piece is pretty darn good, too.

Finally: This GOP “tax reform plan” is nothing but sleight-of-hand double-talking slickest con-men tricks and copied from the Trump playbook: “The Art of the Con.”

They cause and sustain failure and then have the gall it call it success. Why am I not surprised by that class: “Trump 101: How to Duck Being Called a Failure (while failing).”

In my view and down the road when called out on their BS trickle down approach to reform taxes for all by creating jobs for everyone, growing the economy beyond belief, helping farmers, and small business just watch the GOP react by ducking, dodging, denying, then diverting their mess to someone else – also a page from the same Trump playbook: “The Art of the Con.” Believe it.

Yet the GOP base laps this stuff up (always waiting for their big cut which just never seems to come). Call it the wish and hope factor.

Related reading on this same subject:

Senate Side of the bill from the Washington Post

From the Rolling Stone

Thanks for stopping by.