GOOD NEWS FOR BIG BUSINESS

By Robert P. Bomboy

            President Trump's proposal last week of a tax cut for the rich brought joy to the halls of big business. If you heard a loud noise, it wasn't thunder; it was the sound of champagne corks popping by the millions.

Trump's tax scheme includes plenty of "wins" for the billionaire class. It lowers the top income tax rate from 39.6 percent to 35 percent. It slashes the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent. It eliminates the alternative minimum tax, which billionaires pay. It creates a special 25 percent tax rate for partnerships, limited liability companies, and S corporations. Such companies generate the bulk of the tax money that does the heavy lifting for our government. More than nine out of ten companies in America are in this category. As a billionaire, the president personally owns nearly 500 such companies.

Trump, fishing with a big, gaudy bass lure, proclaimed his proposal was a good deal for the little guy, because it would double the "standard deduction" for those of us who don't itemize on our taxes. That would change the deduction from $6,000 to $12,000 for single people, twice as much for married couples. But the scheme would also take away personal exemptions, which now stand at about $4,000 for every person in a family, including children. If you have more than one child, as most families do, you'd lose money, not gain.

"This is a very cynical document," says Edward D. Kleinbard, a tax authority at the University of Southern California law school, speaking of Trump's proposal. "The extraordinary thing about the proposal is that we know that it loses trillions of dollars in revenue, yet at the same time the only people we can identify as guaranteed winners are the most affluent."

            They are the big corporations and the "one percent" you hear about, the people and companies that control 40 percent of the wealth in this country - the rich, the top one percent who have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past 10 years alone; the Wall Street traders who, together, earned more last year than all the kindergarten teachers in America.

Corporations are celebrating because the Trump proposal would do away with the steep taxes they pay when they bring home the profits they make overseas. "It's incredible to think that they are going to be able to repatriate foreign earnings without any tax at all," says one tax expert.

            The richest of the rich in this country rake in literally billions every year. Among the sugar plums in Trump's new tax package is a repeal of the estate or death tax: a tax that only falls on people who die with a $5.5 million or more net worth. There are probably a lot of people like that in Shamokin? NOT! This boondoggle would apply to only 0.2 percent of the people in America.

           

Someone should tell Trump it's not fair that millions of working parents, single and otherwise, would see their taxes increase to help finance a massive tax cut for hundreds of multimillionaires.