Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies
Lie #1: America is the most highly-taxed country in the world
Why does Trump keep repeating what even he has to know by now is a flat lie? I suspect it’s a power thing: he enjoys showing that he can lie repeatedly through his teeth, be caught red-handed in his lie again and again, and his followers will still believe him rather than the “fake news” media.
Lie #2: The estate tax is destroying farmers and truckers
Lie #3: Taxation of pass-through entities is a burden on small business
High-income individuals, however, would gain a lot by paying 15 percent instead of the much higher rates they pay at the margin – 39.6 percent right now. And they’d also have a strong incentive to rearrange their affairs so that more of their income pops up in their pass-throughs.
This wouldn’t be small-business creation; it wouldn’t add jobs; it would just be tax avoidance. That’s what happened when Kansas tried something similar, and played a big role in the state’s fiscal disaster.
Lie #4: Cutting profits taxes really benefits workers
Think about what happens if you cut the taxes on corporate profits. The immediate impact is that (duh) corporations have more money. Why would they spend that extra money on hiring more workers or increasing their wages?
Not, surely, out of the goodness of their hearts – and not in response to worker demands, because these days nobody cares what workers think.
.. But the flip side of those capital inflows would be a bigger trade deficit – hardly what the proponents of tax cuts are advertising – and in any case running trade deficits on the required scale is a much more problematic thing than people seem to realize. The dollar would have to rise sharply – and the strength of the dollar would itself deter foreign investment, very much slowing the process of wage rise.
.. Many of the companies with big overseas hoards also have plenty of idle cash at home; what’s holding them back is a lack of perceived opportunities, not cash flow. And even those who don’t have surplus cash can easily borrow at near-record low interest rates; remember, they can always use the overseas cash to secure their loans.
.. In 2004 the U.S. enacted the Homeland Investment Act, which offered a tax holiday for repatriation of foreign earnings by U.S. multinationals. Careful study of its effects tells us that
.. a $1 increase in repatriations was associated with an increase of almost $1 in payouts to shareholders.
Lie #7: It’s a big tax cut for the middle class
.. In total, by 2027, according to TPC, 80 percent of the tax cut goes to the top 1 percent; only 12 percent to the middle three quintiles.
.. How can this not increase the budget deficit?
The only answer would be if the tax proposal eliminated vast swathes of the existing set of tax deductions, massively broadening the tax base. It doesn’t.
Lie #9: Cutting taxes will jump-start rapid growth
Lie #10: Tax cuts will pay for themselves