Comment by RealGeek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by RealGeek | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> 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.

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)

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".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com