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Comment by tw04 | Hacker News Reader

So he's going to lower taxes on the wealthy, drop taxes on businesses, increase spending on military, destroy our national parks to extract oil, and lay off federal employees.

This is going to help the middle class and the uneducated who are struggling through... magic. None of the lobbying stuff will ever see the light of day. The term limits won't happen. He's going to repeal the "illegal" Obama executive orders but leave the Bush ones in place because... they're illegal but he likes them?

The immigration thing will happen and result in massive backlash if I had to guess. None of the reforms will ever happen because he doesn't have the power to enact any of it, and the Republicans are NEVER going to agree to that when they're currently in power. His justice choice will never in a million years overturn Citizens United which is literally the only affect he could have on political corruption.

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> A middle-class family will get a 35% tax cut.

I did some back-of-the-envelope calculation to figure how our taxes could change for various income levels for married joint filers. This does not factor in any deductions.

Nobody is getting a 35% tax cut. Tax rate for middle-class families will go down by around 1% only, and taxes will go up for low-income families by 2%. Single tax filers will also see an increase in taxes.

The biggest tax cuts will actually go the highest income earners, tax rate will go down by 6.42% for someone who makes $10 million. Maybe that is what Trump calls the middle-class?

Trump's proposed tax brackets vs current brackets

$18,000 Current: $1,800 (10%) Trump: $2,160 (12%) Change: + $360 (2%)

$36,000 Current: $4,472 (12.42%) Trump: $4,320 (12%) Change: - $152 (0.42%)

$75,000 Current: $10,322 (13.76%) Trump: $9,000 (12%) Change: - $1,322 (1.76%)

$120,000 Current: $21,542 (17.95%) Trump: $20,250 (16.87%) Change: - $1,292 (1.08%)

$250,000 Current: $57,913 (23.16%) Trump: $45,750 (18.3%) Change: - $12,163 (4.86%)

$500,000 Current: $143,665 (28.73%) Trump: $11,1750 (22.35%) Change: - $31,915 (6.38%)

$1 million Current: $341,666 (34.16%) Trump: $293,250 (29.32%) Change: - $48,416 (4.84%)

$10 million Current: $3,905,666 (39.05%) Trump: $3,263,250 (32.63%) Change: - $642,416 (6.42%)

Virtually nobody making 10 million a year pays a 39% tax rate. They likely take most of their comp as stock and pay the long term capital gains rate. If they're in finance/VC, they are taking full advantage of carried interest. They have financial planners who structure their portfolio to favor low-tax investments. They form S-Corps and trust funds to defer tax liability, get paid in distributions, write off all sorts of business expenses, use real estate to offset gains with depreciation, carry forward every conceivable loss, tax loss harvest etc. etc. etc. This is how Warren Buffett, Mitt Romney and Trump end up paying < 20% effective rates.

The people hit hardest by "tax the wealthy" politicians are folks making large salaries (engineers, doctors, lawyers...). The mega-wealthy like Mark Zuckerberg make $1 a year in salary. If you really want to go after the wealthy, you need to tax wealth, not ordinary income and go after the complexity of the tax code.

> If you really want to go after the wealthy, you need to tax wealth, not ordinary income

Trump has promised several more yuuge tax breaks and loopholes to wealthy:

- Repeal alternative minimum tax

- Repeal estate tax

- Reduce capital gains tax

- Reduce business tax rate to 15% eliminate the corporate alternative minimum tax.

A wealthy individual could just make an LLC, and funnel all his money into it and enjoy the 15% tax rate while working folks pay regular income tax of 33%.

Making an LLC costs a few hundred bucks a year, so there's no reason any benefits would only accrue to wealthy individuals. To the extent that Trump's business tax proposals actually become law (the 15% business tax with no personal tax applied is a massive change from how it currently works), I predict a shift away from salaried employment and towards independent contracting / small business ownership. Tastes may vary on whether this is a good thing.

Taxing wealth is a terrible idea, because it means every asset has to generate income each year to offset taxes.

Why is that bad? Asking purely out of ignorance.

Just off the top of my head:

- It causes wealth to consume it's own base, depreciating all assets faster even in lieu of inflation

- It disproportionately punishes seniors, who are asset rich and income poor.

- It encourages the wealthy to move and hide assets offshore just like they do with income.

- Double taxation: Wealth is already taxed when it is created

- Punishes asset rich, low income businesses like grocery stores, farms, etc.

I think it's a great idea. Every asset not being put to use, is similar to hoarding cash under the mattress - a waste of capital.

Except that it isn't. Generating income isn't a prerequisite to putting assets to use.

I haven't done the math (and I'm not a fan of the tax cuts) but trump is also offering bigger tax breaks for families with kids per his policy page(https://www.donaldjtrump.com/policies, I haven't read this pdf yet). Since you didn't take that into account, does that change the numbers at all? It wouldn't surprise me one bit if when a republican says "middle class families" they mean literally "married people with non-adult kids".

Firstly, a X% tax cut means a X% reduction in amount of tax paid, not a X% increase in after-tax income. So $10,322 -> $9000 would be a 12.8% tax cut.

Secondly, you're forgetting standard deductions. It's $12,600 today; the Trump plan is to raise it to $30,000. So it would actually be:

$36,000 Current: $2,582 (7.2%) Trump: $720 (2.1%) $75,000 Current: $8,433 (11.2%) Trump: $4,200 (5.6%) etc…

(I hate the guy and don't think this tax plan is a terribly great idea, but the math above is wrong)

You are arguing that he wont do/be-able-to-do things which GOP silent supporters (large corporations) dislike. That is probably a safe bet. However, he can still do crazy things that all his supporters wont care about, such as skewering minorities, Muslims, etc -- I doubt there will be any objection from either his populist support or GOP financial support.

>A middle-class family with two children will get a 35% tax cut.

He's basically Oprah with tax cuts. Kidding aside, I think all politicians promise wide tax cuts, and this "contract" was written prior to him winning. So take most with a grain of salt.

It certainly doesnt seem like a dem. tradition

He's (unfortunately) going to have a LOT of leverage over Congress. One word to his minions and he can instantly remove over 50% of any Republican's support. They are terrified of provoking him.

How is he going to remove their support - Paul Ryan was still reelected against Trump's wishes.

As disliked as Paul Ryan is by Trump followers around the country, his actual seat is very safe. There are plenty of Republicans relying on the Trump coalition, though.

The president doesn't make the tax plan congress does, but given he has a republican congress he can get a lot of those things passed.

That's the point, he'll get the things passed that are going to hurt the country, and the only things that are actually GOOD ideas will sit on the floor because congress is never going to vote to limit its own power.

So four more years of Obama?

For the tax cuts, seems like it'd be pretty helpful for the lower and middle classes from what he's posted here - https://www.donaldjtrump.com/policies/tax-plan

He is pushing protectionist trade policies (backing out of NAFTA, punishing China for currency manipulation, backing out of TPP, etc) that will probably have the biggest income on low-skill jobs that will help the lower and middle classes at the expense of profits for businesses.

I thought this was post-election but it's just his propaganda from a few weeks ago. Nothing should really be taken any more seriously than anything else he's talked about

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