Trump tax Sept 29^th

Donald Trump has, at long last, revealed his tax plan, a major beneficiary of which is…Donald Trump! Trump has decided to completely eliminate the inheritance tax, lovingly called the “death tax” by its opponents. This tax, in its present form only applies to estates over 5.4 million dollars. Once your estate reaches the rarefied level of Trump’s estate, the tax can reach 50 percent. Eliminating this tax altogether will save Trump’s heirs a bundle! The great majority of Americans will not be affected. What else is new?

There is something here for the masses too: If you are married you pay no income tax at all if you earn less the 50 thousand dollars a year, 25 thousand if you are single. Then the tax increases gradually until you reach the very top bracket which results in a 25 percent marginal tax rate. The current top marginal tax rate is about 40 percent and that’s what Trump pays on his reported income last year of about 350 million dollars. His tax plan works out to a saving of about 50 million a year for the Trump family.

This reduction will decrease government revenues by an estimated 400 billion dollars a year. Over twenty years that would come to a loss of 7 trillion dollars. Trump hasn’t specified how this revenue would be recouped nor has he discussed which government programs he would cut. The General Accounting Office (GAO) has found about 200 billion dollars in what they term wasteful spending; of course this is outrageous and should be stopped. The problem is to get any legislator to admit that the government spending in his district is wasteful, particularly since he probably pushed the spending authorization through Congress himself. Each of these people is very upset about waste, fraud and abuse but they are certain none of that goes on in their district. Until that changes, we can’t afford to reduce the government’s income.

Donald Trump is inordinately proud of his business acumen. He inherited an amount that is in some dispute, but it was probably about 200 million dollars. George Will, who is no fan of the Donald, has pointed out in his column today that had Trump simply put his money in an index fund in the stock market he would be worth more than 6 billion dollars today instead of his reputed worth of perhaps 4 billion. Of course George Will doesn’t appreciate the enormous value Trump places on his “brand.” If he had just put his money in an index fund he would be richer in money but certainly not notoriety. And that is a coin above price for Donald Trump.