We retired Tax Justice Blog in April 2017. For new content on issues related to tax justice, go to www.justtaxesblog.org
A poll commissioned for Americans for Tax Fairness and released on November 13 shows almost no public support for the “revenue-neutral” approach to tax reform advanced by Rep. Dave Camp, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.
One question put to respondents was how Congress should use revenue from “closing corporate loopholes and limiting deductions for the wealthy.”
To this, 82 percent preferred the option to “Reduce the deficit and make new investments,” while just 9 percent preferred the option to “Reduce tax rates on corporations and the wealthy.”
What 9 percent chose is basically the approach to tax reform laid out by House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (in the various version of the infamous “Ryan Plan”) as well as the approach laid out by Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp. Both have said that tax loopholes and tax breaks should be reduced and/or eliminated and the revenue savings should be used to offset reductions in tax rates, including reducing the top personal income tax rate and the corporate income tax rate to 25 percent.
Of course, Camp and Ryan present their approach as more than simply reducing rates for corporations and wealthy individuals. They will continue to make the case that they can include provisions that help middle-income Americans directly.
But this will be an impossible case for them to make. After Ryan released the most recent version of his plan, CTJ demonstrated that the tax reform section would provide those whose annual income exceeds a million dollars with an average tax cut each year of at least $200,000. In other words, even if Congress eliminated all of the tax loopholes and tax breaks that Ryan put on the table, millionaires would still end up with a huge net tax cut because of the rate reductions. And if the plan would be implemented in a way that is truly “revenue-neutral” as Ryan and Camp claim, that would mean someone further down on the income ladder would have to pay more than they pay today.
The budget resolution approved by the Democratic majority in the Senate in the spring called for raising $975 billion in taxes over a decade from corporations and wealthy individuals. President Obama has taken a disappointing middle ground, arguinug that reform of the personal income tax should raise revenue, but reform of the corporate income tax (and the personal income tax insofar as it affects businesses) should be revenue-neutral.