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Top Five Problems with the Trump Tax Plan

September 16, 2016

By Ryan Ellis

The Trump campaign today released details of their tax plan–again. This version has a lot more meat on the bone than previous iterations.

First, the good. The plan reduces the number of individual tax brackets from seven to three, in the process cutting the top marginal income tax rate from 39.6 percent to 33 percent. The corporate income tax rate is reduced from 35 percent to 15 percent. The dreaded alternative minimum tax (AMT) is repealed. For families, there is a generous standard deduction, a de facto bigger child deduction, and a very broad 12 percent introductory tax rate on the first $75,000 of taxable income.

That said, there are five big problems with the Trump tax plan (plus a bonus problem for bad measure). By “problem” I mean that it falls short in living up to what a modern, consumption base tax reform plan should be expected to look like from the Republican nominee for president:

Full business expensing only in very limited circumstances. Under the plan, virtually all businesses would remain stuck in slow, multi-year piecemeal deductions of capital equipment purchases known as “depreciation.” The only businesses that would be allowed to fully deduct the expense of capital equipment in the year of purchase are manufacturers (good luck limiting that definition, by the way). Even here, they are effectively punished for doing so by having their deduction for business interest repealed.

Read the full article at Forbes.com: Top Five Problems with the Trump Tax Plan

Issue Categories : Donald Trump, Taxes