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Bonus: being able to claim you're being fiscally responsible. (Despite taxes being a revenue generator and salary to administer them being revenue-positive)
In the 1950s, the citizens paid 50% of the treasury revenues. Business paid 25% and excise taxes covered the other 25%.
Today, the citizens pay 85% of the treasury revenues. Business pays 7% and excise taxes cover the other 7%.
They're not trying to "get rid of taxes" they're "massively shifting the burden onto the individual."
This, by the way, isn't a republican vs. democrat problem. This is easily observable by noticing how both parties do the same things once they have "power." There is no real difference between the "parties" on this one.
A flat tax with a tax-free base seems like the fairest, simplest, and most effective way of implementing a tax system (Estonia has been an extremely pleasant experience so far). I am aware this is also a "progressive" tax of sorts, but a much saner one.
In fact, we all seem to agree that taxes work as a disincentive and we levy tax on the stuff we want people to do less of, but when it comes to wages and business we close our eyes and flail blindly saying "WE NEED MORE TAXES".
Thankfully, some progress was made on internationally agreeing to 15% as a floor, coming into effect this year.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/katharinabuchholz/2024/01/05/wh...
It'd be nice to see (a) additional enforcement resources applied to low-wealth filers (where ROI on salary is reliable and positive) and use the proceeds to (b) fund additional enforcement resources on high-wealth filers.
Fewer levers for Congress to defund, when their donors call up to complain.
If the political system is corrupt, it's unreasonable to assume that one party is better than the other.
He had 4 years to do that and it never even came up. To the degree that he's an opportunist, and doesn't hold stock in Intuit, he might support it (or at least not oppose it).
GWB was worse by far. At least Trump didn't start two massive unnecessary 20-year-long foreign wars that ended up doing nothing but slaughtering millions of civilians, thousands of US citizens, wreaking widespread destruction of both human and non-human environments, and cost US taxpayers untold trillions of dollars that could have been spent elsewhere.
However I do believe that he would flip sides if it seemed like popular sentiment was flipping, and he would claim that he's been in favor of it all along. If this program is successful, that might actually happen, and of course he'll be sworn in by the time the broader program is rolled out, and he'll take credit for it while finding some way to blame Biden for not having it sooner (even though he had 4 years of his own to do it and took no action).