Thread: Donald Trump Rolls Out Winning Platform: Cut Taxes, Save Social Security and Medicare

by PATRICK HOWLEY
19 Jun 2016

Republican candidate Donald Trump focused this weekend on his economic platform: Cut taxes and regulations across the board while also saving Social Security, Medicare, and other government safety-net programs.

Trump’s platform is nearly invincible in the general election if he stresses it enough, polling shows. Trump’s plan will also have a transformational effect on how people view his party. But he still needs to make the accounting work to ensure that his Third Way platform is feasible.

“We’re going to save your Social Security without killing it like so many people want to do. And your Medicare,” Trump said this weekend at a rally in Phoenix, which followed a rally in Las Vegas where he also highlighted Social Security. Trump is only starting to focus on the issue, but he’s been aware of its political potential at least since the Wisconsin primary, when he taunted conservative-movement candidate Ted Cruz and establishment rival John Kasich: “If we don’t make the country rich again, you’re going to have your Social Security cut by Cruz and Kasich.”

This is a major opportunity for Trump. Both parties have attacked Social Security and Medicare in recent years, causing panic among middle-aged Americans. 51 percent of people who have not yet retired — including 64 percent of people under 30 — doubt that they will ever get any Social Security benefits at all, even though they’re paying into the system. 66 percent of all Americans think Social Security is plagued by either “crisis” or “major problems.” 79 percent of Americans during the 2014 midterm elections wanted Social Security to be increased. 79 percent!

Recent Republican candidates Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan ran on an “entitlement reform” scheme that would have resulted in massive cuts and changes to Social Security. They based their plan on the fact that big government spending ran up a dangerous debt, leading us to an “entitlement crisis” that needed to be solved. But they had no idea how to actually increase revenue in the United States to offset their cuts. After they lost the election, Ryan signed off on President Obama’s trillion-dollar-plus “Cromnibus” budget bill that spiked the deficit up even higher.

Trump plans to bring back revenue by reversing trade deals, which he says can bring trillions of dollars back into U.S. government coffers practically overnight. He’s also looking for revenue from other sources: He wants to keep companies in the United States by fighting corporate inversion. He wants to dig up $300 billion by allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices. He wants to cut waste, fraud, and abuse, and eliminate the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency. And he wants to help small companies generate more taxable revenue by easing their federal regulatory burden.

“We’re going to get rid of a big, big percentage of the rules and regulations,” Trump said. “We’re going to get rid of Dodd-Frank to a large extent. So that the banks can loan you money because right now they don’t loan businesses money … Unless you have more money than you’re asking for, they don’t want to loan you money because the regulators are running the banks. And you need money to start businesses.”

With new revenue rolling in, Trump thinks he can save Social Security and cut taxes too. In other words, he thinks he can combine the two most popular fiscal policies in American politics.

“Hillary is going to raise your taxes like crazy. I think to 60 or 65 percent,” Trump said. “She doesn’t want to talk about it. And I’m giving the largest tax cut of anybody, of any candidate that’s run for office.”

“We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world, folks. Nobody pays more taxes. We’re the highest-taxed. Our businesses are the highest taxed in the world. We’re giving a massive tax cut. Especially for business and for small business and especially for the middle class,” Trump said.

Trump’s tax plan, which he rolled out during the primaries, is without question the most conservative tax reform plan since Woodrow Wilson and Congress gave us the federal income tax in 1913 — but it still rankles establishment Republicans because it goes after loopholes and tax havens for politically-connected corporations.

The Trump tax plan wipes out income taxes for poor people making less than $25,000 or married couples making less than $50,000, which exempts “nearly 75 million households,” according to the campaign, from losing a dime of wages to the federal government.

For everybody else, you get three tax brackets: 25 percent, 20 percent, or 10 percent. And for businesses, the ceiling is 15 percent for everyone.

Compare that to Ronald Reagan’s tax reform bill of 1986, which conservative hero Grover Norquist’s group Americans For Tax Reform was literally created to help push. Reagan kept the corporate tax rate at 34 percent and the top individual rate at 28 percent. Trump’s plan is much more conservative.

Trump’s plan is also markedly different than George W. Bush’s tax cuts, which gives Trump another advantage: it nullifies the biggest Obama-era criticism of Republican tax policy, that tax cuts favor the wealthy and drive up the deficit in ways that lead to disaster, like the 2008 financial collapse.

Trump is also craftily positioning himself on Obamacare: Get rid of President Obama’s disastrous program, which threw people off their existing private plans and stifled competition, and “replace” it and preserve the universal health care concept but with more inter-state competition and elements of privatization.

“Obamacare, which we’re going to terminate by the way, 100 percent, and replace,” Trump said. “Because of Obamacare and other things that they have messed up, but because of Obamacare you have so many part-time jobs. People who have never had a part-time job in their life, they always had jobs. Companies are taking people that have been with them for 20 years or more and they’re saying, ‘I’m sorry. I love you. You’re great. I have to make you part time.’ Because they want to get away from those horrendous Obamacare rules and regulations.”

And then, of course, there is Trump’s certainly-not-inexpensive promise to “take care of our vets” by picking up their medical bills at private doctor’s offices instead of utilizing the VA system.

Trump has struck gold politically, but he still has a question to ask himself: How far will he go in preserving the social safety net? Specifically, what will he do about Medicaid? So far, Trump has come out in favor of “block grants” to states for Medicaid. The size of those block grants could end up determining his level of support among African-Americans, who are not currently supporting him by any stretch of the imagination.

Republicans never won the fight to repeal Obamacare, in part, because Obamacare expands Medicaid and that is very popular, especially with African-Americans. Public Policy Polling research during the 2014 midterms — which Republicans still won! — showed 58 percent of people in Florida and 59 percent in Pennsylvania approved of the government expanding Medicaid.

Compare the fates of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who fought Medicaid expansion and dropped to a 27 percent approval rating in his last year in office, with John Kasich, who expanded Medicaid and hit 62 percent approval in his home state of Ohio last fall.

Can Trump really cut taxes and spending better than Ronald Reagan, reverse the Bush-era income inequality aspect of tax cuts, and also save the social safety net? It depends on how much revenue he can really gin up through new trade deals and corporate de-regulations, and it depends on how much budget waste he can eliminate.

But if Trump gets the numbers right, he could overhaul the image that many struggling people have of the Republicans — that they only cut benefits for the poor to pay for their tax cuts for the rich. And he could arrive at a Third Way solution that will change forever the way people vote in America.

http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presid...cial-security/

“We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world, folks. Nobody pays more taxes. We’re the highest-taxed. Our businesses are the highest taxed in the world. We’re giving a massive tax cut. Especially for business and for small business and especially for the middle class,” Trump said.

I don't even have to do a fact check to know the statement "we're the highest-taxed nation in the world" is not accurate. Now if he would have been more specific and only talked about corporate taxes, he probably would have been accurate. I believe you'll find most of the highest taxed nations in the world are in Europe (Denmark, France, Finland, etc.). For the sake of Donald's campaign, I wish he and his handlers would do more research before making these shoot from the hip statements that can be easily disproved. Credibility is important.

To know whether or not Trump's statement is true, which I believe it is, one would have to take his statement literally. Compare the total amount of taxes charged and/or collected in the United States versus the total amount of taxes collected somewhere else. There is no question Americans pay more taxes than any nation in the world. It's also true and something Trump should add to his statement on the subject of Taxes, most Americans receive the least in return for their taxes.

When you add up all the taxes Americans pay to the federal, state and local government, there is no question at all that Americans pay more taxes than any country in the world and receive the least in return for it. Taxation is a terrible cost that is producing less and less benefits to the American People every year this mess continues and is actually being used to fund and underwrite the demise and dissolution of the United States through open borders, trade deficits, budget deficits and corruption.

Okay, now you're going to force me to do a fact check.

Top Ten Countries With Highest Tax Rates



While tax day is still many months off, the burden of taxes represents a constant concern for many Americans. But in many cases, the burden is much greater for people living elsewhere. How much greater? We’ve collected the Top Ten Highest Top Tax Rates, which start at a hefty 48% and just go up from there. If you hate taxes, here’s a list of places to avoid–but if you’d love the healthcare, education, and pensions that those taxes pay for, then here’s a set of states for you to consider!#10 Ireland: 48% on income over $40,696

Ireland is known as a corporate tax haven, with corporations like Apple, Google, and Microsoft incorporating local companies to take advantage of the low corporate income tax rate (12.5%). Of course, the Irish government still must fund itself somehow, and aid from the European Union has meant that they need to raise taxes on residents. And they have: the tax rate is up to 48% for income beyond $40,696. This is admittedly above the Irish average of about $30,000 per worker, but still represents a good fraction of individuals giving up almost half their income!#9 Finland: 49.2% on income over $87,222

Finland is well-known for having made enormous improvements in the quality of its educational system, and being at the top of many rankings. Finland has made a concerted effort to praise teachers in hopes that this would attract them–but they’ve also made an effort to pay them more, and this doesn’t come cheap. The almost 50% tax rate only applies to a small fraction of earners as Finland’s median income is around $31,000 but for those high earners it certainly stings.#8 United Kingdom: 50% on income over $234,484

On the one hand, those earning less than about $14,000 pay no taxes, but on the other–the rich have quite a bill to foot. Fortunately (or unfortunately) for those rich, even in a country as wealthy the UK, very few earners are making enough to get hit by this rate–the median income in the UK is only $25,000. Nevertheless, with London’s role as a global financial center, there are many high-earners paying this rate and even accounting software big companies use can still generate surprising costs. But rest easy, wealthy Brits: your tax rate will drop to 45% next April.

#7 Japan: 50% on income over $228,880

Coming in just ahead of the United Kingdom due to the slightly lower cutoff, Japan is another country featuring a global city (Tokyo) and a high tax rate on ultra-high earners. While not chiefly a financial center (though there is plenty of finance), the supremacy of Japanese firms from Toyota to Nintendo means that there are plenty of high incomes to tap. And a good thing, as the Japanese government’s total debt is over twice the country’s annual income–so that’s a heck of a lot of taxes if they ever want to pay it off. With a median income of about $27,000 most won’t have to hand over this much but for those who do, the tax check of over $100,000 must be daunting.Read more: 10 of the World’s Most Expensive Autographs: Whose Signatures Are Now Worth a Fortune?

#6 Austria: 50% on income over $74,442

Now we’re talking: 50% on a much larger fraction of the population places puts Austria ahead of the UK and Japan. And if you’re earning a paycheck (rather than capital gains or interest), then you can expect a bill for a further 18% in payroll taxes. This puts the tax bill for a worker earning $75,000 at just over $50,000–meaning you’d better be getting some fancy healthcare, a nice pension, and a whole lot more if it’s going to be worth it. Oh, and don’t think about stashing your cash next door in Switzerland: money held there is taxed through a special agreement with the famously reclusive Swiss government.#5 Belgium: 50% on income over $45,037

Rounding out the 50% crowd is Belgium, home to waffles, chocolate, and the European Union. A quite diverse country, in part owing to Brussels’s status as the “capital of Europe”, Belgium is nevertheless not shy about taxing away your income. And tax it away they do: between income, payroll, and local taxes, you’re lucky there’s anything leftover for you!#4 Netherlands: 52% on income over $70,090

In Belgium’s neighbor to the north, Netherlands, the tax rate is just a shade higher–at least for high earners. While average income for a worker is $29,000, a fair portion of the Dutch are paying over half their income in taxes. And it’s not just the footballers! Major brewers, banks, and industrial conglomerates dot the Dutch landscape, and even though they are using skilled accountants and high-end accounting software many paying large salaries that are taxed at the high rate. On the other hand, marijuana is legal, meaning that the mix of taxes and regulations that one would face in Netherlands–as elsewhere–are a matter of “you win some, you lose some”.#3 Denmark: 55.38% on income over $70,633

This high rate is, in fact, down from the 62.3% it was a few years ago. In population a bit smaller than the state of Massachusetts, Denmark tries to get a lot of government bang from its small population’s bucks, funding a universal healthcare system, a top-notch school system, and generous unemployment benefits. Following the so-called Nordic Model, Denmark nevertheless has a very free market and the fourth-highest median wage in the world at almost $40,000 per earner, as well as generally quite low unemployment. A good thing, too, if you want to justify such a high tax rate.#2 Sweden: 56.6% on income over $85,841

Unsurprisingly, Sweden has the highest tax rate in Europe and the second-highest in the world. Commonly referred to as an almost stereotypical socialist state, Sweden follows–or perhaps, invented–the Nordic Model that characterizes Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland as well as Sweden. As in Denmark, the high tax rates subsidize a broad social safety net including free education, subsidized healthcare, and even a guaranteed personal pension. Sweden is also a prime example of the benefits of a free market even alongside a high tax rate, as the nation has more billionaires per capita than the United States, including the founder and owners of Ikea, H&M, and Tetra-Pak. Despite the high income tax rate, there are no taxes on residential property sales nor on inheritance–a fact that the children of the Ikea, H&M, and Tetra-Pak owners are no doubt keenly aware of.Read more: Student Loan: Goodbye College, Hello Loan Repayment!

#1 Aruba: 58.95% on income over $171,149

Aruba, one of the four countries making up the Kingdom of the Netherlands, manages to out-do even the Dutch at taxation: the income tax rate is currently the world’s highest. While Aruba is among the highest-income places in the Caribbean, it has far and away the highest tax rate among nearby places: Bermuda, the Bahamas, and the Cayman Islands all feature a tax rate of zero. On the other hand, Aruba is by far the lowest-income country on the list, with a UN estimated average income of $23,000–and surely the median income is much lower still. One tip if you’re considering the lovely Aruba: get married! The rate for married couples is about 3% lower than for singles, certainly unfair but an advantage of thousands of dollars if you’re in this tax bracket.

https://financesonline.com/top-ten-countries-with-highest-tax-rates/

For the third time, Donald Trump, U.S. is not 'highest taxed nation in the world'

By Louis Jacobson, Linda Qiu on Sunday, May 8th, 2016 at 5:43 p.m.


Donald Trump released a tax plan in September that would give huge tax cuts to the top 0.1 percent and bloat the deficit by at least $10 trillion over the next decade. But after he became the GOP’s last man standing and presumptive nominee, Trump said this week he’s considering raising taxes on the rich.

"Should we assume that most of your plans, then, we shouldn’t take you at your words, as sort of that they’re floors?" Meet the Press host Chuck Todd asked Trump.

"It is called life, Chuck. It’s not my word, of course. I put in a proposal. You know what they are? They're really proposals. People can say it’s a tax plan. It’s really a tax proposal. Because after I put it in, and I think you know the Senate and Congress, you know as much as anybody, they start working with you and they start fighting," Trump responded. "But I’m not under the illusion that that it’s going to pass. They’re going to come to me. They’re going to want to raise it for the rich more than anybody else."

He then explained why, despite that, he’s still sticking to his guns and giving "a massive" tax cut to businesses: "We’re the highest taxed nation in the world. Our businesses pay more taxes than any businesses in the world. That’s why companies are leaving."

This is a version of one of Trump’s oft-repeated talking points, and it’s inaccurate.
When we looked at this claim in the past, we compared the United States to the 33 other industrialized nations in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Data from 2014, the most recent year available, shows that the United States wasn’t the most highly taxed by the typical metrics and actually places near the bottom or around the middle of the pack.

Trump specified this time that he was talking about business taxes, but the essential data doesn’t back him there, either.

Trump would have been more accurate if he had been more specific. The United States does have one of the highest top marginal corporate tax rates in the world. However, companies pay less in practice because they can take deductions and exclusions. When we look at the actual tax burden on U.S. companies, it’s far from highest in the world.

Here’s a chart breaking it down:

Tax revenue as percentage of GDP	Corporate tax revenue as percentage of GDP	Tax revenue per capita
1. Denmark: 50.9% 2. France: 45.2% 3. Belgium: 44.7%	1. Norway: 7.1% 2. New Zealand: 4.4% 3. Luxembourg: 4.3%	1. Luxembourg: $49,911 2. Norway: $38,016 3. Denmark: $31,054
31. United States: 26.0%	17. United States: 2.6%	19. United States: $14,204
32. Korea: 24.6% 33. Chile: 19.8% 34. Mexico: 19.7%	30. Hungary: 1.5% 31. Slovenia: 1.4% 32. Greece: 1.3%	32. Turkey: $2,985 33. Chile: $2,886 34. Mexico: $2,094
OECD average: 34.2%	OECD average: 2.9%	OECD average: $14,923

The World Bank’s data for 2012 — the last year for which it has complete figures — also placed the United States near the bottom in tax revenue as a percentage of GDP. Nations with lower percentages were two OECD members (Japan and Spain), a couple of oil-rich countries (Oman and Kuwait) and few impoverished states (like Afghanistan and the Central African Republic).

We also looked at a 2016 report by the World Bank and PricewaterhouseCoopers that assessed the total tax burden for a case study company in different places around the world. The total tax rate — which includes not only income taxes but also labor taxes, property taxes, profit taxes, etc. — is expressed as a percentage over the total profit.

By this metric, the company would have a total tax rate of 43.9 percent in the United States, placing it at No. 64 out of 189 countries.

That’s lower than the rates the company would have paid in the two countries Trump says the United States loses to, China (67.8 percent) and Mexico (51.7 percent). Moreover, it’s nowhere near the top.

Our ruling

Trump said, "We're the highest taxed nation in the world."
By all metrics we looked at, the United States is far from the most taxed nation overall and for businesses.

We rate Trump’s claim False.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...tion-in-world/

I stand by my original comment that someone in the Trump organization needs to do a better job of checking the facts. The truth is important.

Trump didn't make his statements based on GDP or confine it to federal taxes or even income taxes. You are of course free to stand by any comment you make. You just haven't proved he was wrong or shooting from the hip.

Truth is important which is why I responded to your post. But that's it for me. I'm out and back to ignore.

Can Trump really cut taxes and spending better than Ronald Reagan, reverse the Bush-era income inequality aspect of tax cuts, and also save the social safety net? It depends on how much revenue he can really gin up through new trade deals and corporate de-regulations, and it depends on how much budget waste he can eliminate.

But if Trump gets the numbers right, he could overhaul the image that many struggling people have of the Republicans — that they only cut benefits for the poor to pay for their tax cuts for the rich. And he could arrive at a Third Way solution that will change forever the way people vote in America.

Yes, he can. Social Security and Medicaid are all funded with payroll taxes, more payrolls come from more jobs and higher wages, more jobs come from ending free trade treason and higher wages comes from stopping illegal immigration and pausing/reducing legal immigration.

Originally Posted by Judy

Trump didn't make his statements based on GDP or confine it to federal taxes or even income taxes. You are of course free to stand by any comment you make. You just haven't proved he was wrong or shooting from the hip.

Truth is important which is why I responded to your post. But that's it for me. I'm out and back to ignore.

Unfortunately, as some would have us believe, Trump is not always right. Of course that holds true with the rest of us too, including me. However, as I've proven, Trump got this one wrong. We are not the highest taxed nation in the world. Credibility, credibility, credibility ......

We also looked at a 2016 report by the World Bank and PricewaterhouseCoopers that assessed the total tax burden for a case study company in different places around the world. The total tax rate — which includes not only income taxes but also labor taxes, property taxes, profit taxes, etc. — is expressed as a percentage over the total profit.

Numbers don't lie, liars lie.

When 45% of our manufacturing base is now located in foreign countries, but still claiming US base and paying "Profits" on sales in the United States which are based on imports, you can't compare "total tax revenue" paid by a company as a "percentage over total profit" to other countries because they aren't paying US labor or property taxes or tens of other types of taxes, because they aren't here hiring workers subject to payroll taxes and they don't own property here because they aren't producing here and they aren't paying all the other production and operating related taxes.

Americans who state or believe that we pay more taxes than any country in the world is absolutely correct, because we do. We pay taxes to support these other countries, we incur massive federal debt to support these other countries, we support them economically, we support them militarily, we take in millions of their population a year to support them with US taxpayer funds, so for anyone to think for a second that Americans aren't the highest taxed country in the world doesn't understand taxation, and it's clear PolitiFact is one group of those people who don't.

Give it up. All the misdirection and obfuscation in the world won't make Trump's statement true. We are not the highest taxed nation in the world, period. Accept the truth for what it is and let's move on. Dwelling on every single Trump flaw or misspeak doesn't help him or us because it just draws more attention to it.

Honestly, I'm fairly certain the majority of the voting public already knows we're not the most taxed nation in the world.

Ignore.