President Donald Trump’s surprise call to cut middle-income families’ taxes by 10 percent could mean that top earners would benefit by the move as well, Bloomberg informed.
It’s still unclear how Trump will propose to reduce the tax burden on middle-class Americans, but one of the most straightforward ways would be to lower rates by 10 percent for single filers making up to $82,500. U.S. income tax rates are graduated and income dollars get taxed in chunks as they move up through the brackets — which means wealthy Americans would also get to apply the reduced rate on their first dollars of income.
“A millionaire gets the same size tax cut,” said Kyle Pomerleau, an economist at the conservative Tax Foundation.
According to Bloomberg, such a move would undermine Trump’s last-ditch effort to appeal to middle-class voters before they head to the polls on November 6. Whatever form his 10 percent plan takes, it’s tacit acknowledgement that the 2017 tax overhaul isn’t proving as popular as Republicans had hoped — and isn’t the boon for middle-class families that was promised.
Trump first floated the middle-class tax plan on Saturday after a rally in Elko, Nevada, which caught Republican lawmakers off guard. The President said Monday a plan would be unveiled in the next week or so that would entail “a middle-income tax reduction of about 10 percent.” He added that Congress would vote on it after the November elections.
Meanwhile, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said Tuesday that the House would work with Trump on a new round of tax cuts if Republicans keep control of both chambers in the midterm elections next month, The Hill informed.
“We will continue to work with the White House and Treasury over the coming weeks to develop an additional 10 percent tax cut focused specifically on middle-class families and workers, to be advanced as Republicans retain the House and Senate,” Brady said in a statement.
Speaking in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump said Brady had been working on a new bill “for a while” and that details would be forthcoming quickly.
Be the first to comment