September 21, 2017
The NYT criticized the Republican tax-cutting plans. In particular, it focuses on the plan to apply a 15 percent or 25 percent corporate tax rate for all business pass-through income. This is in place of the current individual income tax rate, which could be as high as 39.6 percent.
The editorial argues that this would be a huge tax break for partners in hedge funds and real estate developers (like Donald Trump), who typically get their income through pass-through corporations. While this is true, it is only part of the story.
Allowing owners of pass-through corporations to just pay the corporate tax rate instead of the individual income tax rate would be a huge loophole that every higher paid person would rush to take advantage of. For example, a highly paid medical specialist would reorganize their business as a pass-through corporation to pay a lower tax rate. The same would be true of other professionals.
In effect, this would allow the vast majority of high-income individuals to pay a lower tax rate than school teachers or firefighters while creating an enormous tax shelter industry. This is truly awful from the standpoint of policy (increasing inequality while reducing efficiency), but if the point is to give more money to the rich, it gets the job done.
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