Candidates’ Tax Cuts Unequivocally Skew Toward the Wealthy

As Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) outlined in a post last week, most major Republican presidential candidates have released tax proposals that would overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy and balloon the national debt. No one can refute this, but candidates and anti-tax, trickle-down economics supporters are trying to obscure the facts.

Last week, the business-backed Tax Foundation released a blog that chides reporters for using dollar amounts instead of percentages to inform the public about how generous candidates’ tax cuts would be for the top 1 percent.  They may as well dangle a shiny object. Shifting the debate toward an analytic discussion of percentages versus average dollars is a distraction. The real issue is why are candidates and their allies trying to convince the public that corporations and the wealthy need more budget-busting tax breaks in the first place?

Federal lawmakers are struggling to find ways to fund the Highway Transportation Fund, pay for debts that have been built up over the past four decades and maintain essential public services. How enormous tax cuts fit into this equation is a far better issue to debate than average dollars versus percentages or shares. Better still, why not call candidates on the carpet and ask them to explain why the nation needs massive tax cuts and what programs they would cut as a result of the lost revenue?

The tax cuts for “jobs creators,” and trickle-down, stimulate-the-economy argument is tired, shopworn and unproven. The public has previously been sold the vision of a future in which everybody—but mostly and especially the rich—gets a tax cut and the nation’s economy grows by leaps and bounds. It didn’t happen in the past, and no serious person thinks it will happen in the future.

When CTJ analyzes tax proposals, its tables show average tax changes in dollars by income group, tax changes as a share of income and the overall share of the tax cut that each income group would receive. Including all three columns of data reveals a complete picture of the distributional effects, as opposed to just the change in after tax income which, in isolation, can obscure the impact.

The most important figures regarding the GOP candidates’ tax plans are the enormous revenue losses that each would incur. In the case of Sen. Marco Rubio, CTJ estimates it would lose $11.8 trillion over a decade. Jeb Bush’s plan would add $7.1 trillion to the national debt over 10 years. Donald Trump’s plan would blow a $12 trillion hole in the federal budget over a decade. An analysis of Rand Paul’s flat tax plan found it would starve the federal government of $15 trillion over a decade, and a forthcoming CTJ analysis of Ted Cruz’s plan likely will find it would be equally as devastating to the federal budget.

It is fair game to evaluate whether the nation can afford a tax proposal in which the biggest share and dollar amount flow to the wealthy.

CTJ director Bob McIntyre says criticisms of using dollars to evaluate candidates’ tax plan are a ruse.

“Why is anyone even talking about tax cuts?” McIntyre said. “We already don’t raise enough revenue to pay for existing programs, and as more and more Baby Boomers continue to retire, we’ll need a lot more revenue to pay back IOUs to Social Security, while maintaining other essential programs.”

By trumpeting tax cuts without talking about the consequence and then attempting to shift the public debate toward theoretical discussions about percentages versus whole numbers, candidates and anti-tax advocates are trying to obfuscate the real issue, McIntyre said.

Given the reality of our nation’s fiscal situation, neither dollars nor percentages can justify more huge tax cuts for the wealthy. That’s the substantive discussion we should be having.