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Forbes Columnist Is Wrong About Full Expensing

October 4, 2015

By Scott Greenberg

Today, in Forbes, John Tamny offers his take on Donald Trump’s recently released tax plan. Tamny is skeptical of Trump’s recently released plan:

It’s surprisingly generated a lot of excitement on the right.  Maybe too much excitement as there’s a lot that’s dangerous or confused within.

Throughout the piece, Tamny criticizes several aspects of Trump’s plan, from its treatment of carried interest to its high tariffs on trade. However, near the beginning of the piece, Tamny takes a few paragraphs to praise Donald Trump for a change to the tax code that he did not include in his plan:

To get started, it’s best to begin with what’s very good.  While the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page criticized Trump for his failure “to follow Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio in allowing businesses to expense 100% of their capital investment,” Trump’s decision to not support the subsidization of capital investment is correct.

Tamny is correct in noting that, out of the four comprehensive tax proposals to come out of the Republican field so far, Trump’s is the only one not to make any changes to the tax treatment of capital investments. Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and Jeb Bush have all proposed moving to a system of full expensing, where businesses can deduct the entire cost of capital expenses (such as machines, equipment, and buildings) up front, rather than having to spread the deduction out over several years. Trump’s tax plan, on the other hand, would keep the tax treatment of capital investment as it is now – a set of complex depreciation schedules for different assets.

Read the full article at the Tax Foundation: Forbes Columnist is Wrong about Full Expensing

Issue Categories : Donald Trump, Taxes