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A recent commentary on business tax policy by Richard Rubin in the Wall Street Journal had some very glaring errors and suggestive, misleading language.
For instance, Rubin discusses inversions in a way that makes them sound unjust and problematic –calling them a “discrete business-tax problem” that Congress has been unable to properly address. However, this is a patently false statement. Business inversions are perfectly legal, and sometimes the only just remedy for an anti-business climate that unfairly disadvantages American companies abroad by demanding both domestic and foreign tax revenue.
He later goes on to suggest that ultimate question plaguing and dividing Congress is: “Is the U.S. collecting enough money from wealthy individuals?” But when did class warfare become the driving force for government and economic decisions? Why is this the lens by which so many view various policies? Such a question is absolutely ridiculous to even consider. Why is the U.S. in the business of “collecting enough money” from “wealthy individuals?”
Thomas Sowell said it best when he remarked, “I have never understood why it is “greed” to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.” Such a question posited by Rubin is outrageously greedy.
His description of the 1986 IRC reforms was a total mischaracterization. Rubin writes, ”
“Until 1980, when the top individual rate was 70% and the corporate rate was 46%, the two systems were largely separate. Big businesses paid the corporate income tax, then when shareholders got capital gains or dividends, they paid again on the same profits. Small businesses paid as individuals.
The 1986 tax overhaul flipped that calculation, dropping the top individual tax rate to 28% and the corporate rate to 34%. New businesses saw little reason to become traditional C corporations that pay the corporate tax–unless they planned to go public. That has left the corporate tax as the domain of the largest companies. Meanwhile, states liberalized business-formation laws and Congress loosened eligibility rules for S corporations that don’t pay the corporate tax.”
Yet it’s he’s not exactly correct. With the IRC reforms of 1986, Reagan reduced the tax rates to 28% in exchange for getting rid of the tax shelters. As a result, the amount of federal income collected was more at 28% and a clean tax code than at 70% and 91% and tax shelters, because at 28%, it really wasn’t worth the time, cost, and effort to hide money.
Rubin also fails to explain the egregious set up for corporate taxes known as “double taxation.” It is
THE reason why these businesses file as non-corporate entities — so that they can avoid it. Here’s how it works:
Some companies, say a Fortune 500, pay taxes at corporate rates. The highest corporate rate is 35%. Right now, if a corporation pays taxes and reinvests its profits, there is no extra tax. But if it profits are given to the owner, they are taxed again on that amount–- which is knows as double taxation. Those business owners who wish to avoid the double taxation instead pay at individual rates, the highest of which is now 39.6% (which surpasses the corporate tax rate.)
Rubin mocks this set-up, writing “still, many pass-throughs think they are disadvantaged because the top individual rate of 39.6% exceeds the 35% corporate rate.” But they are disadvantaged. Why should businesses be taxed twice, anyway? Trying to circumvent an unfair, heavy handed tax-code on one end results in being penalized by a higher margin at the other end.
We get a further glimpse at what is driving some tax overhaul proposals. Orrin Hatch has suggested eliminating the second layer of “double taxation,” which is somewhat dismissed by Rubin when he points out that some situations might “exempt more income than necessary.” Getting enough revenue, then, is still the key driver at least on the Democrat side. This is reiterated a paragraph later when Rubin reveals that another overhaul proposal, to “deduct capital costs immediately and get a 25% rate” is also unacceptable — because “Democrats won’t tolerate the foregone revenue–and benefit to high-income households–tied to those plans.”
Why is getting enough revenue, and getting it from high-income households, the motivating force behind tax proposals these days? Why are so-called economists and analysts yielding to these class-warfare and fair share litmus tests when pontificating on tax policy? Businesses are the backbone of our country. Policy should focused on growing the economy, not punishing those who are successful. How can we honestly and morally consider taking more money from those taxpayers and business owners who have been able to create wealth and employment successfully — and just give it to the government and politicians who manage to continuously and egregiously squander income?
Rubin’s erroneous analysis was a disappointment to read in the pages of the Wall Street Journal.
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New Jersey governor Chris Christie has announced his endorsement of Donald Trump for President. Is he really so clueless? Perhaps he is just so annoyed because he lost to the real candidates that he is having a temper tantrum.
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The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a new study that monitored Obamacare subsidy payments. The results are sobering; billions in payments were made to individual Obamacare users which may have been the result of fraud.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) uses information from three agencies in order to verify Obamacare eligibility; they are the IRS, DHS, and SSA. But if there are inconsistencies within the data, the system doesn’t necessarily catch them, resulting in the misallocations. From the report:
“About 431,000 applications from the 2014 enrollment period, with about $1.7 billion in associated subsidies for 2014, still had unresolved inconsistencies as of April 2015—several months after close of the coverage year.”
These findings correspond to other reports over the last couple of years which found similar problems. They were summarized by ATR, below:
- “An auditor’s report examining Minnesota’s Obamacare exchange found the exchange enrolled more than 100,000 individuals who were ineligible for the program. In all, the audit estimated an error rate of close to 50 percent, and the state overpaid up to $271 million over the five-month period that was analyzed by auditors.
- A December 2015 report by the Health and Human Services Inspector General (HHS OIG) found that CMS relied entirely on data from health insurers to verify whether enrollees had paid their premiums and were eligible. However, this data was completely insufficient – insurers provided payment information on an aggregate rather than enrollee-by-enrollee basis, making verification all but impossible.
- A October 23, 2015 report by GAO found that Obamacare exchanges (both state and federal) were failing to verify key enrollment information of applicants including Social Security numbers, household income, and citizenship.
- A September 1, 2015 report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) found that Obamacare exchanges are failing to provide adequate enrollment information to the IRS for proper payment and verification of tax credits.
- An August 2015 report by HHS OIG found that the federal exchange is failing to verify Social Security numbers, citizenship, and household income of Obamacare applicants. As a result, the exchange is unable to verify whether applicants are properly receiving tax credits.
- A July 16, 2015 audit by GAO found that 11 of 12 fake ‘test’ applicants received coverage for the entire 2014 coverage period despite many using fraudulent documents, and others providing no documentation at all. From these 11 applicants alone, Healthcare.gov paid $30,000 in tax credits.
- A June 16, 2015 report released by the HHS OIG found that $2.8 billion worth of Obamacare subsidies and payments had been made in 2014 without verification.
- A June 10, 2015 TIGTA report found the IRS failed to properly administer nearly $11 billion in Obamacare tax credits.
- A May 21, 2015 report by TIGTA found that the IRS failed to test Obamacare processing and verification IT until a week before the filing season began.”
How much more mismanagement can we take? This latest report is just one of many highlighting the string of Obamacare failures — unfortunately at the expense of the taxpayer once again.
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On January 28, 2016, the Wall Street Journal ran a press release from August 10, 2004 in their “Notable & Quotable” section. The press release was fascinating, both in subject and source. The release, from the University of California, Los Angeles, announced the results of a study on the Great Depression, and found that government interference in the economy hampered and prolonged the Depression recovery.
As UCLA is not really considered a bastion of conservative or economic thought, the fact that such a study emerged is quite important — and obviously respected enough that the WSJ chose to re-run it in their pages. It echoes of Amity Schlaes important book on the topic, “The Forgotten Man.” It also resonates as a parallel to our current economic slump and anemic recovery.
I went digging for the original press release , and was eventually able to find it. The release discusses the study and its conclusions more in depth. I have reprinted the release below, in its entirety.
From a University of California, Los Angeles news release, Aug. 10, 2004:
“Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
After scrutinizing Roosevelt’s record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.
“Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump,” said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA’s Department of Economics. “We found that a relapse isn’t likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies.”
In an article in the August issue of the Journal of Political Economy, Ohanian and Cole blame specific anti-competition and pro-labor measures that Roosevelt promoted and signed into law June 16, 1933.
“President Roosevelt believed that excessive competition was responsible for the Depression by reducing prices and wages, and by extension reducing employment and demand for goods and services,” said Cole, also a UCLA professor of economics. “So he came up with a recovery package that would be unimaginable today, allowing businesses in every industry to collude without the threat of antitrust prosecution and workers to demand salaries about 25 percent above where they ought to have been, given market forces. The economy was poised for a beautiful recovery, but that recovery was stalled by these misguided policies.”
Using data collected in 1929 by the Conference Board and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Cole and Ohanian were able to establish average wages and prices across a range of industries just prior to the Depression. By adjusting for annual increases in productivity, they were able to use the 1929 benchmark to figure out what prices and wages would have been during every year of the Depression had Roosevelt’s policies not gone into effect. They then compared those figures with actual prices and wages as reflected in the Conference Board data.
In the three years following the implementation of Roosevelt’s policies, wages in 11 key industries averaged 25 percent higher than they otherwise would have done, the economists calculate. But unemployment was also 25 percent higher than it should have been, given gains in productivity.
Meanwhile, prices across 19 industries averaged 23 percent above where they should have been, given the state of the economy. With goods and services that much harder for consumers to afford, demand stalled and the gross national product floundered at 27 percent below where it otherwise might have been.
“High wages and high prices in an economic slump run contrary to everything we know about market forces in economic downturns,” Ohanian said. “As we’ve seen in the past several years, salaries and prices fall when unemployment is high. By artificially inflating both, the New Deal policies short-circuited the market’s self-correcting forces.”
The policies were contained in the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which exempted industries from antitrust prosecution if they agreed to enter into collective bargaining agreements that significantly raised wages. Because protection from antitrust prosecution all but ensured higher prices for goods and services, a wide range of industries took the bait, Cole and Ohanian found. By 1934 more than 500 industries, which accounted for nearly 80 percent of private, non-agricultural employment, had entered into the collective bargaining agreements called for under NIRA.
Cole and Ohanian calculate that NIRA and its aftermath account for 60 percent of the weak recovery. Without the policies, they contend that the Depression would have ended in 1936 instead of the year when they believe the slump actually ended: 1943.
Roosevelt’s role in lifting the nation out of the Great Depression has been so revered that Time magazine readers cited it in 1999 when naming him the 20th century’s second-most influential figure.
“This is exciting and valuable research,” said Robert E. Lucas Jr., the 1995 Nobel Laureate in economics, and the John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. “The prevention and cure of depressions is a central mission of macroeconomics, and if we can’t understand what happened in the 1930s, how can we be sure it won’t happen again?”
NIRA’s role in prolonging the Depression has not been more closely scrutinized because the Supreme Court declared the act unconstitutional within two years of its passage.
“Historians have assumed that the policies didn’t have an impact because they were too short-lived, but the proof is in the pudding,” Ohanian said. “We show that they really did artificially inflate wages and prices.”
Even after being deemed unconstitutional, Roosevelt’s anti-competition policies persisted — albeit under a different guise, the scholars found. Ohanian and Cole painstakingly documented the extent to which the Roosevelt administration looked the other way as industries once protected by NIRA continued to engage in price-fixing practices for four more years.
The number of antitrust cases brought by the Department of Justice fell from an average of 12.5 cases per year during the 1920s to an average of 6.5 cases per year from 1935 to 1938, the scholars found. Collusion had become so widespread that one Department of Interior official complained of receiving identical bids from a protected industry (steel) on 257 different occasions between mid-1935 and mid-1936. The bids were not only identical but also 50 percent higher than foreign steel prices. Without competition, wholesale prices remained inflated, averaging 14 percent higher than they would have been without the troublesome practices, the UCLA economists calculate.
NIRA’s labor provisions, meanwhile, were strengthened in the National Relations Act, signed into law in 1935. As union membership doubled, so did labor’s bargaining power, rising from 14 million strike days in 1936 to about 28 million in 1937. By 1939 wages in protected industries remained 24 percent to 33 percent above where they should have been, based on 1929 figures, Cole and Ohanian calculate. Unemployment persisted. By 1939 the U.S. unemployment rate was 17.2 percent, down somewhat from its 1933 peak of 24.9 percent but still remarkably high. By comparison, in May 2003, the unemployment rate of 6.1 percent was the highest in nine years.
Recovery came only after the Department of Justice dramatically stepped up enforcement of antitrust cases nearly four-fold and organized labor suffered a string of setbacks, the economists found.
“The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations of economists and policy-makers that capitalism could not be trusted to recover from depressions and that significant government intervention was required to achieve good outcomes,” Cole said. “Ironically, our work shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government not intervened.”
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Charles Koch applauds Bernie Sander’s recognition of cronyism in government, and he is right. Cronyism has no place in our system. Koch makes a particular note about ethanol integrity — which he opposes in spite of ethanol mandates — against the likes of Harry Reid and others who try to denigrate the Kochs.
Koch’s article in the Washington Post is worthwhile to read in its entirety; it’s not pro-Bernie, but raises important and correct notes about the function of government as well as economics.
~
“As he campaigns for the Democratic nomination for president, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) often sounds like he’s running as much against me as he is the other candidates. I have never met the senator, but I know from listening to him that we disagree on plenty when it comes to public policy.
Even so, I see benefits in searching for common ground and greater civility during this overly negative campaign season. That’s why, in spite of the fact that he often misrepresents where I stand on issues, the senator should know that we do agree on at least one — an issue that resonates with people who feel that hard work and making a contribution will no longer enable them to succeed.
The senator is upset with a political and economic system that is often rigged to help the privileged few at the expense of everyone else, particularly the least advantaged. He believes that we have a two-tiered society that increasingly dooms millions of our fellow citizens to lives of poverty and hopelessness. He thinks many corporations seek and benefit from corporate welfare while ordinary citizens are denied opportunities and a level playing field.
I agree with him.
Democrats and Republicans have too often favored policies and regulations that pick winners and losers. This helps perpetuate a cycle of control, dependency, cronyism and poverty in the United States. These are complicated issues, but it’s not enough to say that government alone is to blame. Large portions of the business community have actively pushed for these policies.
Consider the regulations, handouts, mandates, subsidies and other forms of largesse our elected officials dole out to the wealthy and well-connected. The tax code alone contains $1.5 trillion in exemptions and special-interest carve-outs. Anti-competitive regulations cost businesses an additional $1.9 trillion every year. Perversely, this regulatory burden falls hardest on small companies, innovators and the poor, while benefiting many large companies like ours. This unfairly benefits established firms and penalizes new entrants, contributing to a two-tiered society.
Whenever we allow government to pick winners and losers, we impede progress and move further away from a society of mutual benefit. This pits individuals and groups against each other and corrupts the business community, which inevitably becomes less focused on creating value for customers. That’s why Koch Industries opposes all forms of corporate welfare — even those that benefit us. (The government’s ethanol mandate is a good example. We oppose that mandate, even though we are the fifth-largest ethanol producer in the United States.)
It may surprise the senator to learn that our framework in deciding whether to support or oppose a policy is not determined by its effect on our bottom line (or by which party sponsors the legislation), but by whether it will make people’s lives better or worse.
With this in mind, the United States’ next president must be willing to rethink decades of misguided policies enacted by both parties that are creating a permanent underclass.
Our criminal justice system, which is in dire need of reform, is another issue where the senator shares some of my concerns. Families and entire communities are being ripped apart by laws that unjustly destroy the lives of low-level and nonviolent offenders.
Today, if you’re poor and get caught possessing and selling pot, you could end up in jail. Your conviction will hold you back from many opportunities in life. However, if you are well-connected and have ample financial resources, the rules change dramatically. Where is the justice in that?
Arbitrary restrictions limit the ability of ex-offenders to get housing, student or business loans, credit cards, a meaningful job or even to vote. Public policy must change if people are to have the chance to succeed after making amends for their transgressions. At Koch Industries we’re practicing our principles by “banning the box.” We have voluntarily removed the question about prior criminal convictions from our job application.
At this point you may be asking yourself, “Is Charles Koch feeling the Bern?”
Hardly.
I applaud the senator for giving a voice to many Americans struggling to get ahead in a system too often stacked in favor of the haves, but I disagree with his desire to expand the federal government’s control over people’s lives. This is what built so many barriers to opportunity in the first place.
Consider America’s War on Poverty. Since its launch under President Lyndon Johnson in 1964, we have spent roughly $22 trillion, yet our poverty rate remains at 14.8 percent. Instead of preventing, curing and relieving the causes and symptoms of poverty (the goals of the program when it began), too many communities have been torn apart and remain in peril while even more tax dollars pour into this broken system.
It is results, not intentions, that matter. History has proven that a bigger, more controlling, more complex and costlier federal government leaves the disadvantaged less likely to improve their lives.
When it comes to electing our next president, we should reward those candidates, Democrat or Republican, most committed to the principles of a free society. Those principles start with the right to live your life as you see fit as long as you don’t infringe on the ability of others to do the same. They include equality before the law, free speech and free markets and treating people with dignity, respect and tolerance. In a society governed by such principles, people succeed by helping others improve their lives.
I don’t expect to agree with every position a candidate holds, but all Americans deserve a president who, on balance, can demonstrate a commitment to a set of ideas and values that will lead to peace, civility and well-being rather than conflict, contempt and division. When such a candidate emerges, he or she will have my enthusiastic support.”
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I have written numerous articles over the year about the onerous, destructive practice of IRS asset forfeiture cases. Basically, the IRS has been leveraging laws intended to target money launderers and criminals in order to seize the bank accounts of business owners who make one or more deposits of $10,000 cash. Time after time, these cases showed the circumstances were not criminal, and yet citizens spent months and even years trying to get their hard-earned money back.
In 2014, after a series of high-profile cases outlined the outrageous behavior, the IRS announced it would restrict its practice to situations in which the person is suspected of criminal activity; subsequently, the DoJ issued a change as well, saying that they would devote themselves only to the “most serious illegal banking transactions.”
While these changes are a step in the right direction, they still left behind a trail of cases that severely disrupted the work and lives of many Americans. Remember, money was seized time after time for years — usally without any charges ever brought forth, only the suspicion of possible “illegal activity” for merely depositing large sums of money.
Some of the tactics involved in the practice of asset seizure involve the government offering a “settlement” to the business owners, returning to them only a portion of their hard-earned money, which keeping the rest for their coffers. Many people — for fear of government or lack of funds for representation — chose the path of settlement to be able to move on with their lives and have some money back in their accounts.
Two asset forfeiture cases have emerged recently where both parties are requesting restitution. The first cases involves trying to recover the portion of the money that the government kept as part of the settlement; the second cases requests the full portion that was seized after the party involved unknowingly signed away his account when visited by IRS agents.
In the first case, due to “a prior settlement with the government, Randy and Karen Sowers, who own South Mountain Creamery in Middletown, Maryland, got back a portion of the seized money, around $33,500. Now in a new letter filed this week to the Justice Department, a nonprofit organization that has has been working with the farmers is helping in the fight to get back the rest of the couple’s money — $29,500 — despite the prior settlement.
Randy Sowers said his bank teller initially suggested that his wife keep deposits under $10,000 to avoid time-consuming paperwork at the bank. “We thought it was very legitimate,” he said. Karen Sowers initially wanted to deposit $12,000 earned from a weekend farmer’s market. “If I wanted to hide it, I would have put it in a can. We have trouble paying our bills and don’t need the government coming and taking money from us.”
Despite settling previously with the government, the Sowerses and Johnson say they are owed all of the assets, and initially had to settle for fear of losing the full amount seized and potentially more assets.
Congress has even gotten into the fray. The House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight took up the Sowers case, and asked the Treasury Department to review similar cases.”
The related cases include Khalid “Ken” Quran, who owns a convenience store in Greenville, North Carolina. He had more than $150,000 seized in June 2014 after he unknowingly agreed to forfeit his bank account when IRS agents visited his store, accusing him of skirting reporting laws. Quran denies the charges.
“He said, ‘You need to sign a paper,’ and I told him my English is not right,” said Quran, an immigrant from the Middle East. “Then he read it to me like you would read the newspaper and said you need to sign it.” Quran said he did nothing wrong. “No bank told me that. No bookkeeper told me that,” he said.
He has not received any of his money back, and the Institute for Justice has also filed a petition on Quran’s behalf. On Tuesday, the legal nonprofit send a letter to the IRS, asking for his petition to be reviewed.”
The IRS and Department of Justice should work immediately to make these cases, and possibly others, correct again. The seizures, as they were practiced prior to the changes made in 2014, were egregious and improper.
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As we mourn the loss of the magnanimous Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, questions inevitably rise about the pending cases in the Supreme Court. Scotusblog has issued the following release:
“What happens to this Term’s close cases? (Updated)
The passing of Justice Scalia of course affects the cases now before the Court. Votes that the Justice cast in cases that have not been publicly decided are void. Of course, if Justice Scalia’s vote was not necessary to the outcome – for example, if he was in the dissent or if the majority included more than five Justices – then the case will still be decided, only by an eight-member Court.
If Justice Scalia was part of a five-Justice majority in a case – for example, the Friedrichs case, in which the Court was expected to limit mandatory union contributions – the Court is now divided four to four. In those cases, there is no majority for a decision and the lower court’s ruling stands, as if the Supreme Court had never heard the case. Because it is very unlikely that a replacement will be appointed this Term, we should expect to see a number of such cases in which the lower court’s decision is “affirmed by an equally divided Court.”
The most immediate and important implications involve that union case. A conservative ruling in that case is now unlikely to issue. Other significant cases in which the Court may now be divided include Evenwel v. Abbott (on the meaning of the “one person, one vote” guarantee), the cases challenging the accommodation for religious organizations under the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate, and the challenge to the Obama administration’s immigration policy.
The Court is also of course hearing a significant abortion case, involving multiple restrictions adopted by Texas. In my estimation, the Court was likely to strike those provisions down. If so, the Court would still rule – deciding the case with eight Justices.
Conversely, the Court was likely to limit affirmative action in public higher education in the Fisher case. But because only three of the liberal Justices are participating (Justice Kagan is recused), conservatives would retain a narrow majority.
There is also recent precedent for the Court to attempt to avoid issuing a number of equally divided rulings. In Chief Justice Roberts’s first Term, the Court in similar circumstances decided a number of significant cases by instead issuing relatively unimportant, often procedural decisions. It is unclear if the Justices will take the same approach in any of this Term’s major, closely divided cases.”
The unfortunate death of one of the greatest legal minds and constitutional scholars will certainly make the race to the White House, and even Congress, especially contentious. This country has lost a legacy.
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With Bernie Sanders doing well against Hillary Clinton for the Democrat nomination, it’s a great time to look at some of the specifics of his tax plan. The Tax Foundation studied the affects of the major changes (listed below). Their analysis found that Sander’s plan will reduce typical income by more than 15% while simultaneously hiking taxes by the trillions and shrinking the GDP by nearly 10% over the next decade.
First, Sander’s plan highlights:
Individual Income Tax Changes
–Adds four new income tax brackets for high-income households, with rates of 37 percent, 43 percent, 48 percent, and 52 percent.
–Taxes capital gains and dividends at ordinary income rates for households with income over $250,000.
–Creates a new 2.2 percent “income-based [health care] premium paid by households.” This is equivalent to increasing all tax bracket rates by 2.2 percentage points, and would raise the top marginal income tax rate to 54.2 percent.
–Eliminates the alternative minimum tax.
–Eliminates the personal exemption phase-out (PEP) and the Pease limitation on itemized deductions.
–Limits the value of additional itemized deductions to 28 percent for households with income over $250,000.
Payroll Tax Changes
–Creates a new 6.2 percent employer-side payroll tax on all wages and salaries. This is referred to by the campaign as an “income-based health care premium paid by employers.”
–Creates a 0.2 percent employer-side payroll tax and 0.2 percent employee-side payroll tax, to fund a new family and medical leave trust fund.
–Applies the Social Security payroll tax to earnings over $250,000, a threshold which is not indexed for wage inflation.
Business Income Tax Changes
–Eliminates several business tax provisions involving oil, gas, and coal companies.
–Ends the deferral of income from controlled foreign subsidiaries.*
–Changes several international tax rules to curb corporate inversions and limit use of the foreign tax credit.*
Estate Tax Changes
–Decreases the estate tax exclusion from $5.4 million to $3.5 million.
–Raises the estate tax rate from 40 percent to a set of rates ranging between 45 percent and 65 percent.
–Changes several estate tax rules involving asset valuation, family trusts, gift taxes, and farmland and conservation easements.*
Other Changes
–Creates a financial transactions tax on the value of stocks, bonds, derivatives, and other financial assets traded by U.S. persons. The rate of the tax ranges from 0.005 percent to 0.5 percent, depending on the type of asset.*
–Limits like-kind exchanges of property to $1 million per taxpayer per year and prohibits the use of like-kind exchanges for art and collectibles.*
Now, The Weekly Standard analysis:
Now that Bernie Sanders has routed Hillary Clinton by 22 points in New Hampshire, the American people might be curious to learn more about some of his specific policy proposals, starting with his tax plan. The nonpartisan Tax Foundation has scored Sanders’s plan and has found it would cause the after-tax incomes of those in the middle of the income spectrum—those with incomes between the 40th and 60th percentiles—to drop by between 16.3 and 17 percent. In other words, Sanders’s tax plan would reduce the typical American’s income by a sixth.
This would result partly from Sanders’s raising of taxes on the middle class (and on everyone else), and partly from the ill-effects that his myriad tax hikes would have on the economy. In terms of tax increases for the middle class, Sanders would add a new 6.2 percent employer-side payroll tax that his campaign calls an “income-based health care premium paid by employers,” which would be passed on to employees in the form of lower wages. He would also add a new 2.2 percent “income-based [health-care] premium paid by households,” which the Tax Foundation writes “is equivalent to increasing all tax bracket rates by 2.2 percentage points.” It turns out that government-run “single payer” health care requires a whole lot of payers.
In all, the Tax Foundation finds that Sanders’s tax plan would be a $13.6 trillion tax hike—27 times as large as Hillary Clinton’s proposed $498 billion tax hike.
Sanders’s plan would also shrink the U.S. gross domestic product by 9.5 percent over ten years in relation to what it otherwise would have been, according to the scoring. That means it would decrease the size of the economy by about $2.6 trillion—or about $8,000 for every American, or $32,000 per family of four. If a rising tide lifts all boats, Sanders’s plan seems designed to sink the whole American fleet.
While middle-class Americans’ incomes would fall by a sixth under Sanders’s plan, the incomes of the top one percent would fall even more, dropping by a quarter. That might provide some solace for Sanders supports—if everyone is less prosperous, everyone should at least be more equal.
If you’d like to read the full Tax Foundation study, go here.
