GOP releases tax reform plan: Highlights are lower rates, higher standard deductions, no more death tax

I will support this all day long for six reasons:

1. Lower rates are better rates.
2. Fewer rates are better than more rates.
3. Higher standard deducations are essesntially the same as lower rates, and they apply to everyone.
4. A massive corporate tax cut from 35 percent to 20 percent is absolutely huge.
5. The inheritance tax is terrible policy.
6. The alternative minimum tax is even worse policy.

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All of these issues are addressed by this plan, although the death tax is only eliminated gradually over the course of six years, and obviously a future Congress could stop it from happening. But if it does, then that Congress is responsible for its actions. I'll support it because it's much better than the status quo, and it will result in more robust economic growth. The corporate rate cut alone makes the proposal worthy of support. But it's not as good ass it could have been. Preserving the mortgage interest deduction and the state/local tax deduction was a mistake and missed a huge opportunity to further simplify the code. They say eliminated other special deductions so we'll have to see what they actually did, but they shouldn't have kept these two. They're popular and thus hard to get rid of, but they're still bad policy. Here is the summary just released by the House Ways and Means Committee of the proposal, which curiously doesn't mention the corporate rate cut, even though it's in there:

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Keeping the 39.6 percent rate was a sop to the Beltway soak-the-rich mentality

Keeping the 39.6 percent rate was a sop to the Beltway soak-the-rich mentality. When Bill Clinton was president, he added a 10 percent "luxury surcharge" onto the then-top rate of 36 percent, resulting in a highest rate of 39.6 percent. Republicans at the time rightly panned it as a punishment of success and productivity. That's what the GOP decided to preserve by not putting all the highest earners in the 35 percent bracket. Now look, this is very far from my ideal tax code, which is basically everyone paying a very low rate of maybe 15 percent and no one getting any exemptions of any kind. I continue to be disappointed that so many people who are elected as Republicans don't want to do something like that. But it would make no sense to oppose a bill that improves the economic environment as much as this one would vis-a-vis the status quo. We need better growth, and this would deliver it. That needs to be the Republican message, as well, when Democrats and their media servants shriek about how it's going to be "paid for." What they should ask instead is how individuals and businesses are supposed to pay for the high tax rates that are imposed on them now. The government exists to serve the people, not the other way around. It's not the best proposal we could have gotten, but it would do tremendous good. Now pass it and put it on the president's desk. Much of the political media will emphasize themes like "Trump and Republicans need a legislative win." No. Americans need a tax cut and more economic growth. That, and only that, matters here.

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