In a policy speech laying out his economic proposals, Bush couldn’t resist taking shots at the frontrunners in the 2016 race: “Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, who he said just “may not believe” we can grow the economy”.
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Bush would also cap deductions at 3% of a tax filer’s adjusted gross income.
Under his plan, Bush wants to reduce the corporate income tax from 35 percent – among the highest in the world – to 20 percent and give businesses the chance to deduct new capital investments immediately. George W. Bush tried to reverse course, but was only able to do so temporarily because of budget rules that were put in place when his dad was president that limited the duration of such tax cuts. Bush would eliminate the deduction of state and local taxes. Jeb’s tax cuts, they conclude, “would greatly increase the USA economy’s size in the long run, leading to higher incomes for taxpayers at all income levels”. The point is, they think that, like water from Moses’ rock, the Jeb plan would unleash a gusher of growth, which would help make up for some of the revenue lost from lowering rates. He’d also stretch out the tax brackets.
Bush said he wants to create a tax system that is “simple, fair and clear”, and predicts his proposal would help accelerate US economic growth.
His plan calls for reductions in both the individual and corporate tax rate and would eliminate the estate tax, among other code simplifications. That includes Bush, who lost most of the value of his 2013 deductions to the limits he is planning to repeal, said Roberton Williams, a fellow at the Tax Policy Center in Washington. “Under my plan, tax bills will be going down, but those earning $200,000 or more will bear a greater share of our income tax burden than they do today”.
Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential bid was dogged by the carried-interest issue when he revealed that he paid an effective tax rate of about 15 percent, largely on his compensation from Bain Capital.
He would streamline seven individual tax brackets to three: 28%, 25% and 10%.
Matt Callahan, president of Callahan Construction and Development, a Raleigh company that operates in 17 states, said he was impressed with Bush’s plan for a tax overhaul.
Morris & Associates, which cools products ranging from poultry to nuclear power plants, would benefit immensely from Bush’s tax plan, Bush told attendees.
The Obama administration has repeatedly proposed limiting some of these breaks. “It should be easy to understand and make it easy for people to fill out their own tax forms”, Bush wrote.
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Referring to a Colorado veterans hospital project that has ballooned in cost, Bush said, “no one accepts responsibility”, his voice rising as he jabbed a finger into the air punctuating his words. Rand Paul, R-Ky., would set investment taxes at 14.5%, as part of his flat-tax plan. Those tax cuts contributed to the record deficit spending that even Jeb Bush criticized Tuesday night on the first episode of CBS’s “Late Show With Stephen Colbert“.
