Trump has a plan to change the tax code to make himself much, much richer
The plan creates a massive loophole with which ordinary people can evade taxes. Instead of just working for Vox.com, I could form DylanCorp LLC, contract with Vox to provide writing services, and pay a 15 percent rate on DylanCorp’s earnings rather than my current 25 percent rate. For rich people paying a top rate of 39.6 percent (or the top individual rate of 33 percent that Trump proposed during the campaign)
.. A new study finds that when Kansas exempted pass-through income, the result wasn’t more investment or growth but a surge in this kind of tax avoidance.
.. the Trump Organization, and the entire Trump family. The Trump Organization isn’t a “C corporation.” It doesn’t pay corporate income tax. Instead, it’s structured as a collection of pass-through enterprises, so the vast majority of income accruing to Trump and his family is taxed through this system. Trump almost certainly pays the 39.6 percent rate on his earnings, so he’s cutting his own top tax rate by more than half. It’s the most transparently self-interested policy he’s proposed since taking office, and it will likely save him tens of millions of dollars.
.. That return also implied that without the alternative minimum tax, which Trump wants to repeal, he would have paid less than 3.5 percent of his income in federal income taxes. Cutting the pass-through rate while repealing the AMT would probably reduce his tax burden to roughly half that level. Instead of paying $38 million, he could’ve paid less than $3 million.
.. A paper by Berkeley economist Stefano DellaVigna and co-authors found that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s TV network, Mediaset, saw profits grow by at least €1 billion during his time as premier, not necessarily due to graft but because businesses shifted advertising to Mediaset as a way to lobby Berlusconi.