5 Worst Parts Of The Newly-Revealed Republican Tax Plan

Today House Republicans released a tax bill that provides massive tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations while simultaneously cutting the health care, education, and mortgage deductions middle-class families rely on and blowing a big hole in the deficit. Here are just some of the worst parts of the newly-revealed Republican tax plan:

  1. Provides a windfall to huge corporations by cutting the corporate tax rate from 35% to 20%.

Bloomberg: “House Republican leaders began rolling out a tax bill Thursday that contains sweeping changes for business and individual tax rates, including a measure to cut the corporate tax rate to 20 percent.”

  1. Gives a massive handout to the wealthy by repealing the estate tax and eliminating the alternative minimum tax.

Washington Post: “It would create giant new benefits for the wealthy by cutting business taxes, eliminating the estate tax, and ending the alternative minimum tax.”

New York Times: “The proposal will double the estate tax exemption to roughly $11 million, from $5.49 million, meaning families can avoid paying taxes on large inheritance. And it eventually repeals the estate tax altogether, phasing it out entirely in six years.”

  1. Repeals deductions that benefit middle-class families.

Wall Street Journal: “For example, the proposal repeals an itemized deduction for medical expenses, a crucial provision to households with extraordinary health-care costs. It also repeals the tax credit for adoption and the deduction for student-loan interest. The bill also limits the home mortgage-interest deduction.”

  1. Creates a Trump loophole by lowering rates on pass-through businesses from 39.6% to 25%.

Vox: “It would also offer a new low tax rate for owners of ‘pass-through’ businesses like LLCs and partnerships, whose income from their businesses is taxed as personal income. The bill in its current form would almost certainly give disproportionate benefits to wealthy Americans, who tend to benefit from corporate tax cuts more than non-wealthy Americans and who could likely exploit the pass-through rate by setting up dummy corporations.

  1. Eliminates the $4,050 per child tax exemption and calls for a $300 tax credit that’s only temporary.

Associated Press: “The child tax credit would be increased from $1,000 to $1,600, though the $4,050 per child exemption would be repealed.”

Wall Street Journal: “The House bill also creates a new $300 credit for each person in a filer’s family who isn’t a child, including the primary taxpayer and non-child dependents such as college students. Those $300 credits expire after 2022.”