Thread: Trump administration back to square one on tax reform

Trump administration back to square one on tax reform

Published April 10, 2017 FoxNews.com

President Trump has gone back to the drawing board on tax reform as he looks for wide-ranging Republican support behind legislation to overhaul the tax system.

A White House official told Fox Business Network that all options are still on the table.

A detailed tax plan is still being weeks away.

A complete tax overhaul will likely miss the August deadline set by Treasury Secretary Mnuchin. The White House is trying to learn from the failure of enacting a new health care law to replace ObamaCare and take a more active role in getting legislation passed.

White House aides told The Associated Press Monday that the goal is to cut tax rates sharply enough to improve the economic picture in rural and industrial areas of the U.S. However, the administration so far has swatted down alternative ways for raising revenues, such as a carbon tax, to offset lower rates.

Trump has not said which trade-offs he might accept and had remained noncommittal on the leading blueprint for reform from Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

Brady has proposed a border adjustment system, which would eliminate corporate deductions on imports, to raise $1 trillion over 10 years that could fund lower corporate tax rates.

But that possibility has rankled retailers who say it would lead to higher prices and threaten millions of jobs, while some lawmakers have worried that the system would violate World Trade Organization rules.

Brady has said he intends to amend the blueprint but has not spelled out how he would do so.

Another option being floated around on Capitol Hill would change the House GOP plan to eliminate much of the payroll tax and cut corporate tax rates and possibly requiring a new dedicated funding source for Social Security.

The change, proposed by a GOP lobbyist with close ties to the Trump administration, would transform Brady's plan on imports into something closer to a value-added tax by also eliminating the deduction of labor expenses. This would bring it in line with WTO rules and generate an additional $12 trillion over 10 years, according to budget estimates. Those additional revenues could then enable the end of the 12.4 percent payroll tax, split evenly between employers and employees, that funds Social Security, while keeping the health insurance payroll tax in place.

This approach would give a worker earning $60,000 a year an additional $3,720 in take-home pay, a possible win that lawmakers could highlight back in their districts even though it would involve changing the funding mechanism for Social Security, according to the lobbyist.

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, said that all of the trial balloons surfacing in public don't represent the work that's being done behind the scenes.

"It's not really what's going on," Portman said. "What's going on is they're working with on various ideas."

The White House has not officially commented on any plan, but said in a statement but said a value-added tax based on consumption is not under consideration "as of now.”

Fox Business Network's Blake Burman and The Associated Press contributed to this report

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017...ax-reform.html

Oh dear God. Congress Republicans aren't even going to deliver on the tax reform plan. Congress, what is wrong with you?

Check out the FairTax. HR 25 in the US House of Representatives and S 18 in the US Senate. If incorporates many of the things many of you want but does so in a plan that works.

It eliminates the payroll tax to fund SS and Medicare but replaces it with an adjustable 8.09% national retail sales tax on new goods and services.

It provides a border adjustment tax but without tax implications for corporations and businesses with an additional 14.91% national retail sales tax on new goods and services which levels the playing field between domestic producers and foreign imports, all taxed the same at the final point of sale, with no freebies to the importers like we have now.

It simplifies the tax code tremendously because it eliminates the income tax code that taxes income and replaces it with a very simple national retail sales tax on retail consumption. It eliminates all income tax returns, replaced with 2 or 3 lines on retailers existing state monthly retail sales tax reports and the states use their state sales tax groups to collect it. Retailers and the states are paid a fee for their service in doing this.

It also offers a Rebate to any citizen or legal resident household to exempt essentials up to the Household Consumption Allowance for anyone who wants it regardless of income. It's based on number of eligible (citizen or legal resident) adults and children in the household, there's an amount for adults and a lower amount for children. The Rebate is handled by the Social Security Administration because of the eligibility that is based upon citizenship, legal residency and a legally-assigned social security number. Illegal aliens are not eligible.

Based on the 23% combined rate, it's revenue neutral based on income tax rates in effect in 1999, prior to the Bush Tax Cuts, when the legislation was first introduced into the US Congress.

It's controversial because for the most part if puts the income tax industry out of business including income tax software companies, income tax attorneys and of course income tax preparation companies and CPA's and accountants involved income tax return preparation, even though there will be quite a lot of business for them with the retailers required to collect, report and transmit the monthly sales tax. The Rebate is also controversial because some people view it as an entitlement, when it's just a comparable method of exempting essentials, the same as the personal and dependent deductions of the income tax system.

It's called the FairTax because it's egalitarian and treats everyone the same, causing some to call this "Unfair" and a "Fraud".

Everything Donald Trump is trying to do with trade, immigration, tax cuts, growing the economy, bringing our jobs home, tax simplification, reduced paperwork, increased efficiency, cutting costs ... the FairTax does without confrontation, implication or conflict.

Everything Republicans say they want to do, the FairTax helps them achieve.

Time to take a serious and honest look at the FairTax Act of 2017.

Just a footnote. I am so disappointed in our Republican Congress. Americans did the impossible electing our new President, against all odds, out-spent, out-maneuvered, with not only the massive DNC against us, all of the Corrupt MSM against us, all the pundits against us from conservatives to communists, and fake news about polls and who was ahead and where. Yet, the majority of Americans in over 30 states rose to the occasion and defeated those trying to destroy our country to elect a dear man named Donald J Trump who wants nothing but to fix our country and make it great again by reversing the policies that got us into this mess to begin with.

Two of those involved Congress and needed to be done right away, right out the gate, 1) repealing/replacing Obamacare to free employers and citizens from mandates so companies could expand hiring and citizens would have more jobs available to them and 2) tax reform to drop the corporate rates to 15% also reduce the tax rates on individuals.

It really didn't matter what was in the health care bill so long as the mandates were removed and the other protections were maintained. It doesn't really matter whether it's subsidies or tax credits. What mattered for the country as a whole was removing the mandates on employers to provide health insurance if over a certain size and workers over a certain number of hours and removing the individual mandate. Why did this matter? It mattered for job creation. The rest of it can and will be worked out through other pieces of legislation or within the authority of the Secretary of Health and Human Services through regulatory changes.

Tax reform is crucial to grow this economy, nut the details for individuals, simplification and all of that is great, the FairTax legislation does everything everyone wants, but that wasn't what mattered. What mattered was cutting the corporate and business tax rates to create jobs. That was what mattered now. The rest of a major code reform or a new system like the FairTax could be addressed later, Trump wanted the corporate tax and business rate reductions to jump-start the economy, to bring our jobs home, to bring our companies back to the United States and create good high-paying jobs in manufacturing, the foundation of the US economy.

Will Trump find a different way to grow this economy? Yes, he will. But it will take longer, go slower, and be less than it could have been. Every day longer it takes, every job that could have been created that wasn't, is a continuation of suffering, despair and public spending on welfare assistance. Why would any Republican want to prolong that instead of step up and do what is necessary to make the rejuvenation go bigger, faster and put more Americans back to work sooner rather than later?

These are the questions voters will have in 2018. And Republicans in Congress aren't going to have any good answers. This President hasn't asked much from Congress. But he can't change Obamacare by himself. He can't lower corporate tax rates with an Executive Order. Congress had to do that and do it quickly.

But that's okay, I guess, so enjoy your Easter Break, we know you've exhausted yourselves since your last break with your 45 minutes of voting to confirm Neil Gorsuch for the US Supreme Court. You can work on confirming our US Trade Representative and Secretary of Labor after you've had another 2 week vacation. We wouldn't want to fix our bad trade deals or attend to the needs of our workers ahead of your long vacations.

Meanwhile, our President is on the job 24/7/365 holding up the fort and doing what he can to advance his agenda without you.