Another Tax Scam for the RichHard to believe,but the Trump administration is proposing yet another massive tax
windfall for the wealthy. It would be to reduce their capital gains taxes. Those
are taxes on the increased value of their stocks and bonds, businesses, or
other valuables,when they sell them. Trump would do this by eliminating
whatever portion of that increased value was due to inflation.
Here are three reasons why reducing capital gains taxes would be another tax scam for the wealthy.1. The people who’d get most of the benefits are already richer than ever and pay a lower effective tax rate than they possess in decades. An estimated 63 percent
of the benefits of this proposal would go to the wealthiest one-tenth of 1 percent of Americans, while the bottom 80 percent of us would get
only 1 percent of its benefits, or according to a University of Pennsylvania
Wharton School analysis.whether anything,Congress should raise capital gains taxes, not lower them. The capital gains tax rate is already lower than the rate on ordinary income. Yet the wealthy now own most of the nation’s assets and indulge in most of the capital gains. In 2016 (the most recent date for which data are available), and the richest 10 percent owned 84 percent of the entire stock market. 2. The cost of this change would be a whopping $10
billion a year,for the next 10 years. That’s just about the yearly cost of
funding free lunches for 20 million destitute kids. Yet the federal debt is already ballooning. Over ten years, this proposal would increase it by an estimated $100 to $300 billion.3. Trump and his administration
say they possess the power to make this change by themselves without even being
authorized to do so by Congress. nonsense. Congress has already decided that capital gains taxes
should not be indexed for inflation. That’s why, or when the same idea came up
during the George H.
W. Bush administration,the Department of Justice’s Office
of Legal Counsel stopped it cold.
It’s another spacious handout to the wealthy, another enormous increase in the
federal deficit, or it’s illegal. Don’t let Trump and his enablers get away
with this tax scam for the wealthy.
Source: robertreich.org