Every time Republicans hold both houses of Congress and the Presidency, we hear about the crying need for "tax reform," and when you hear that, you should be scared, because to Republicans tax reform generally means rewarding the rich and throwing crumbs (if that!) to working families. And indeed, the Tax Policy Center has already analyzed the Trump tax "reform" plan, such as it is, and found it would give the average family making less than $25,000 annually a $40 tax cut, while giving folks earning more than $3.4 million annually a $900,000-plus tax cut. That'd be two $20 bills standing next to a stack of $20 bills more than 16 feet high. I suppose we should count it as a victory that Republicans have largely avoided talking about income tax cuts this time around, as if they know we know it's a scam -- mainly, they've talked about corporate taxes, in terms of "competition" with foreign corporations (a cause close to Mr. Trump's heart, amirite?) and the "job creation" that would supposedly result from cutting the corporate tax rate.
And I suppose "hmm, our corporate tax rate is higher than Freedonia's" has some appeal if you don't think very much about it -- but if you think about it even a little, you'll see through it like you see through everything else. Of course corporations get so much welfare from our government that they don't pay anywhere near the 35% rate, and they don't create more jobs when they pay lower taxes, and a a "territorial" tax system would encourage corporations to pretend they make even more money overseas when they actually make it here. But arguments supporting corporate tax cuts also fail for one other reason: because people hate corporations. When the story of the last 10 years is the story of corporations crashing our economy, laying off millions of good Americans while sitting on trillions of dollars in reserves, and soaking up virtually all of the gains from this most recent economic "recovery" and using it not to create jobs, but mainly to buy back stock so as to concentrate their executives' power, then most folks would likely say why would we give these assholes a tax cut?
So I recommend that you call your Reps and Senators, using the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a smartphone) and tell them no to a cut in the corporate tax rate, no to a "territorial" tax system, and no to any tax cuts (including Estate tax repeal or capital gains cuts) that benefit the wealthy more than they benefit working families. You could also offer viable alternatives: pass legislation like S. 863, the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, and H.R. 1932, the Corporate EXIT Fairness Act, which would help prevent corporations from pretending they're "foreign" to avoid paying their share of taxes. You could tell them to cap (not eliminate!) the mortgage interest deduction so homeowners can take it but slumlords and vultures can't. Or you could tell them to simply end corporate welfare tax breaks and bring back the 91% tax bracket on millionaire income. Now that's a job creation program, right there -- we've seen it work before, during the New Deal years, when CEOs couldn't pay themselves astronomical salaries because our government would tax most of it away, and didn't want to show a whole lot of profits, either, so they built more factories and paid more workers to make more stuff which more people bought, which helped create the greatest middle class this planet has ever seen.
And one more thing: you should prepare yourself for anything you can imagine this Congress would do, including pretend to have a discussion about corporate tax cuts that proves merely to be a smokescreen for getting massive income tax-cuts-for-the-rich done. You saw how far Congress was willing to go to pass their health care "reform" bill -- i.e., not even putting the bill through Senate committees or holding public hearings on it -- so why shouldn't we expect them to ram a tax "reform" bill down our throats before we can even catch our breath? Why shouldn't we imagine that they'll attach their tax "reform" effort to a debt limit increase or a budget resolution? You've been hearing enough about how "brutal" September's going to be (Congress has to deal with both the budget and the debt limit before month's end) that you'd be right to suspect it's a possum game, and that they're planning to take us hostage. So be sure to remind your Reps and Senators, as always, that this is America, and we're not hostages -- we're free people. Thank you, and God bless.
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