Few businesses now pay the full 35 percent rate, taking advantage instead of many deductions in the existing tax code.
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Speaking to the New York Economic Club, Trump also called for cuts to federal spending, which he says would save the government up to a trillion dollars over the next decade.
“With a $10 billion business if Donald Trump dumped his taxes out today, there would be all kinds of misinterpretations of that and maybe some real interpretations of that between now and November”. The Clintons paid an effective federal income-tax rate of 34% in 2015. “It works”, Trump said. When the audience hesitated to applaud immediately, the Republican said, “Don’t worry, they’re going down”, referring to tax rates, “not up”. On Thursday, Trump responded to those critics by revealing a major overhaul to his original plan.
If Trump’s economic team is upset, it might be because his plan doesn’t actually call for 4 percent growth.
During his speech Thursday, Trump sought to portray his plan as beneficial to working-class Americans more than high earners. “They will receive the biggest benefit and it won’t even be close”. The top individual tax rate is now 29.6 percent.
“If we lower our taxes, remove destructive regulations, unleash the vast treasure of American energy, and negotiate trade deals that put America first, then there is no limit to the number of jobs we can create and the amount of prosperity we can unleash”, Trump said Thursday. “(There are no laws barring Trump from disclosing his tax returns while he is being audited)”. It’s unclear whether that will happen before the November 8 election. Tax specialists say doing so would subject Trump’s returns to public scrutiny that may find issues the auditors have missed. Lundgren is the CEO of Macy’s, which severed ties with Trump previous year after his remarks about Mexican immigrants.
CNN put it bluntly with the headline, “Trump son: America can’t handle seeing Trump’s 12,000-page tax return”. Clinton also proposes to eliminate the carried-interest tax break.
Alan Cole, an economist at the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation, said in a report Thursday that Trump’s revised plan is a sizable tax cut but that it would not cost almost as much as Trump’s original plan. But Trump said that this reduction should be revised down to $2.6 trillion in order to account for the growth he’d spark in the economy.
But several economists didn’t agree.
Trump didn’t offer up a projected cost for such a tax plan. “This money can all be saved through simple, common-sense reforms”, he said.
Trump is counting on savings from the spending cuts to help offset the revenue loss from his tax cuts, in order to avoid increasing the deficit.
His campaign also filled in some additional details on Trump’s plan, which has evolved over the past 12 months.
He now wants to cap deductions at $100,000 for a single filer and $200,000 for a married couple. Trump’s 15 percent cap on this business money is a perk for wealthy individuals now pay a 39.6 percent rate on ordinary income that flows through these channels.
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Trump also used the Manhattan address to bash Hillary Clinton’s economic plan, saying it favored only donors and special interests – and that only those who cozied up to Clinton could get rich.
