The tax loopholes Donald Trump would write for himself

By David Akadjian
Sunday Oct 09, 2016 · 3:16 PM EDT

Trump supporters have been out in force this week defending their candidate not paying taxes. The line they tend to use looks something like: “Don’t hate the player, hate the game.”

In other words, Donald is just being smart for taking advantage of a system that is rigged for the wealthy. While they’re right that he’s taking advantage of a system rigged for the wealthy, the real problem is that it’s rigged for the wealthy to begin with—and more specifically, he wants to rig it even more.

Here are the loopholes Donald wants to write for himself, and details on how you or your children would eventually have to pick up the tab.

The tax code already is written for the wealthy

One of the best graphics to demonstrate how the tax code is rigged for the wealthy uses data from a Congressional Budget Office report titled “The Distribution of Major Tax Expenditures in the Individual Income Tax System.”

Cost of tax expenditures by income group benefiting.
Who benefits most from the tax code.
The above graph makes it pretty clear who’s receiving the lion’s share of the benefit from our tax code.

What are the two candidates proposing to do about this?

The Trump plan: Give more to the top 1 percent

The biggest change Trump has proposed is dropping the tax rate on businesses (like his own) to 15 percent. He also proposes lowering the top income tax bracket rate from 39.6 percent to 33 percent and getting rid of the estate tax (which currently only impacts individuals with an estate larger than $5.45 million—$10.9 million for a married couple).

All of these changes are changes designed to benefit the top 1 percent.

According to the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation:

The [Trump] plan would lead to at least 10.2 percent higher incomes for the top 1 percent of taxpayers or as much as 16.0 percent higher, depending on the nature of a key business policy provision.
The Foundation estimates his plan would add anywhere from $2.6 to 3.9 trillion to the deficit. This takes into account any possible stimulus effect that giving more tax breaks to the wealthy might have on the economy.

Los Angeles Times columnist Doyle McManus reached out to the Trump campaign this past week to ask about this analysis and received no response.


The Clinton plan: Investing in America

By comparison, let’s look at the Clinton plan. Changes in the Clinton plan include:

A cap on itemized deductions
The Buffett rule: Anyone making over $1 million/year pays at least 30 percent
A 4 percent surtax on taxpayers with incomes over $5 million
According to the Tax Foundation:

The [Clinton] tax plan would lead to 0.7 percent lower after-tax income for the top 10 percent of taxpayers and 1.7 percent lower income for the top 1 percent
The Clinton plan would raise between $191 to $498 billion over the next 10 years. Instead of adding to the deficit and passing the costs down to the next generation, her plan would raise revenue.

Raising taxes on those who have benefited most from our country would help pay for badly needed infrastructure improvements that would benefit everyone and stimulate the economy. Clinton’s plan is much more about investing in America.

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http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/10/09/1578417/-The-tax-loopholes-Donald-Trump-would-write-for-himself