As Reagan once famously said- "there you go again" and by that I mean pushing regressive tax policies which favor the wealthy and corporations and punish the working class and low income workers.
15% corporate income tax rate:
A GIFT to the wealthy CEOs and stockholders. The USA reached very high prosperity even when the corporate taxes were relatively high! There is no obvious link between lower taxes and economic growth. Funneling what used to be tax money into the pockets of share holders and CEOs is a key factor in the USA's steadily growing wealth gap starting with the regressive so-called "Reagan Revolution."[2]
capital gains tax rate perhaps to 15%:
BAD idea! Capital gains tax rates are already a major factor in wealth inequality in the USA[3]. These wealthy people don't live off a paycheck, they live off their deferred wealth,often borrowing against assets rather than cash them in and claim it as income.
"the family does NOT owe taxes on its asset-leveraged loans because the government doesn’t tax borrowed money. Wealthy family uses its untaxed wealth to access significant amounts of untaxed cash to live luxuriously while continuing to grow its wealth, untaxed, indefinitely."[4]
15%tax rate on personal taxes:
Another BAD and regressive idea! This "flat tax" again benefits the wealthy. Flat taxes mean that the wealthy pay far less of their disposable income in taxes whereas as you go down the income scale the effect on middle class and lower income people gets higher-taking a bigger chunk of their disposable income.
You can't claim you want to "increase household savings" when you take more of their disposable income.
Lower corporate taxes do NOT provide for more capital growth. We saw that experiment LIVE with the 2017 Trump tax cut which merely facilitated stock buy-backs and shareholder dividends. Companies don't use this money for expansion. They borrow [6]
Finally, Mr Busler writes: "Some will argue that this plan is just a tax break for the wealthy. While the effective tax rate for the wealthy would decline, they would have more capital to invest which would eventually increase their income and increase the amount of taxes that they pay. Remember, the goal is to increase tax revenue from the wealthy which would happen."
Pure pie-in-the-sky fantasy. We've been cutting taxes for the wealthy steadily since 1981 and all that it did was increase income inequality- it did not increase taxes. The wealthy just practice more sophisticated tax avoidance mechanisms which middle class and lower cannot avail themselves of.
Again, real world test case-the 2017 tax cut- did NOT generate greater revenue [7] and in fact the federal debt INCREASED after the tax cut. [8]
I continue to be amazed that Mr Busler never seems to actually marshal any facts or evidence while continuing to regurgitate trickle-down economics.
[1]
https://equitablegrowth.org/the-relationship-between-taxation-and-u-s-economic-growth/
[2]
[3]
https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/arguments-against-taxing-unrealized-capital-gains-of-very-wealthy-fall-flat#:~:text=Deferral%20of%20capital%20gains%20income,appear%20on%20income%20tax%20returns.
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/did-the-2017-tax-cut-the-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act-pay-for-itself/
[8]
