working with what we have is how we've gotten stuck with the temporary income tax for near a century. Radical changes are needed or it's just a different shade of lipstick on the pig. Trump is pulling off one of the greatest con jobs of the century on the American Right, and they're buying it hook line and sinker.

 

Trump is a big government corporatist, heck he's not even a social conservative. Of course he supports a progressive tax scale it's how they keep the peasants happy. Fair tax or bust, I don't even support the flat tax. The state has NO right to my money before I ever see it. I'm done compromising. 

I don't think they are.  I believe Trump's popularity is more broad spectrum than the conservative base.  Conservatives appreciate the fact that he's not willing to play the politically correct game.  Other than that, they've got a pretty good read on who he is, and the majority recognize that he's not one of them.  He's more of a curiosity at the moment, and that love affair is already starting to fizzle. 

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Never argue with idiots. They drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

He has two really good ideas in his plan, and that is the one-time 10% tax on money that is being held overseas and not repatriated because companies don't want to be taxed twice.   By all reports, there is 2 trillion dollars that could be repatriated to the US and isn't because of the high corporate tax rate and the fact that the companies in question have already paid corporate taxes in the overseas countries they operate in.  The US is the only country that taxes profits that have already been taxed by other countries.  A lot of ideas have been floated in the past about whether to declare a one-time amnesty or to temporarily reduce the tax rate on this money.  

 

The other good idea is to not allow hedge fund operators to use the long term capital gain tax rate on their income.   Currently these guys make huge fortunes running these hedge funds and there's a loophole that lets them use the long term capital gain rate on their income.   So Trump would make them use the regular tax rates like everyone else. 

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He has two really good ideas in his plan, and that is the one-time 10% tax on money that is being held overseas and not repatriated because companies don't want to be taxed twice.   By all reports, there is 2 trillion dollars that could be repatriated to the US and isn't because of the high corporate tax rate and the fact that the companies in question have already paid corporate taxes in the overseas countries they operate in.  The US is the only country that taxes profits that have already been taxed by other countries.  A lot of ideas have been floated in the past about whether to declare a one-time amnesty or to temporarily reduce the tax rate on this money.  

 

The other good idea is to not allow hedge fund operators to use the long term capital gain tax rate on their income.   Currently these guys make huge fortunes running these hedge funds and there's a loophole that lets them use the long term capital gain rate on their income.   So Trump would make them use the regular tax rates like everyone else. 

 

The last bit is actually kind of genius if you think about it.  With the current surtax as part of obama care the effective rate is around 23.86 or something to that affect.  Under this plan it eliminates the special treatment but the top marginal rate is only 25% so you take a bone away from the left (the carried interest provision) at at the same time while 1.14 % from the hedge fund guys could be a few hundred million in real dollars, its not enough of a proposed increase for the top money men in the country to go to the mattresses over.  

 

I think that Trump has been honest about his feelings on this for a while.  He told Hannity that he doesn't believe in a flat tax system, he disagreed publicly with Ben Carson about it at the last debate.  He believes that you don't ask the Gardener barely making ends meet to shoulder the same burden as the CEO's lawn that he's cutting.  

 

Yes, in a perfectly conservative world there wouldn't be an income tax.  I get that.  But right now i Don't think any candidate outside Carson is advocating going to a truly flat tax and there will still be deductions and exemptions for the bottom tier of income earners.  The Fair tax even makes these concessions through the pre-bate.  

 

I think that the repatriation idea is long overdue.  This should be something that we do in all times of economic need because its easy, costs us nothing, and the benefits are tremendous to the economy.  

 

Two big questions remain: what do you do with the Earned income tax credit and what do you do with the mortgage interest deduction.  In the case of the EIC the 0% bracket sounds nice on paper but its not going to take long for people to realize that most families earning at that level don't currently pay much if any INCOME TAX to begin with.  If you are going to cut a tax rate they don't pay anyway and then take away the 3200 refund they get per child that's going to open the door for the left to say this is a cut for the rich and a cut to benefits for the poor.  

 

Also, the middle class has had the MID drilled into their brains and tattooed on the backs of they skulls.  You can talk about rates all you want, but if they think that their baseline number is going to go up by 10k a year to start with that could be a tough sell.  

 

I am all for simplification, i am all for reduction of taxes and i don't see anything in Trump's plan that deviates from those two concepts.  Politically, i think that those two sacred cows to the middle and lower class haven't been adequately addressed and I would be interested to see how they are answered.  I think that if those two elements of the current system stay, even in a limited capacity, then this is a plan that people could get behind even if it doesn't fit their personal flavoring.  

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