Tag: TaxJusticeBlog

In the Tax Justice Digest we recap the latest reports, blog posts, and analyses from Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Here’s a rundown of what we’ve been working on lately.

The 411 on the 2016 Democratic Party Platform

Much has been made of the Democrats’ platform. CTJ staff took a look and concluded that the platform represents a “meaningful victory for progressives.” For our full analysis click here.

Tim Kaine’s Record: Largely Progressive With Some Bumps Along the Way

Hillary Clinton’s VP pick Tim Kaine is a sitting senator and former Virginia governor. CTJ took a look at his tax record and concluded that while he has supported progressive tax reform efforts, he’s occasionally taken stances that are at odds with those efforts. Here’s CTJ’s full look at Sen. Kaine’s tax record.

Sales Taxes Should Apply to Services, but Politics Keeps Getting in the Way

ITEP research director Carl Davis writes that loopholes in most state sales tax codes that exempt services like haircuts, carpet cleaning, massages, and swimming pool maintenance make sales taxes less adequate, less sustainable, and less fair. Read Carl’s blog post and find links to ITEP’s latest policy brief on the issue here.

State Rundown Stalemates and Tax Cut Talk

This week’s Rundown features an ongoing stalemate in New Jersey, talk of new tax cuts in Arkansas, “tampon taxes,” and the taxation of fantasy sports. Be sure to check out the What We’re Reading section for new research on public attitudes toward tax and budget issues.

Read the Rundown here.

If you have any feedback on the Digest or tax stories you’re watching that we should check out too please email me  kelly@itep.org

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For frequent updates find us on Twitter (CTJ/ITEP), Facebook (CTJ/ITEP), and at the Tax Justice blog.

This week’s Rundown features an ongoing stalemate in New Jersey, talk of new tax cuts in Arkansas, “tampon taxes,” and the taxation of fantasy sports. Be sure to check out the What We’re Reading section for new research on public attitudes toward tax and budget issues. Thanks for reading the Rundown!

— Meg Wiehe, ITEP State Policy Director, @megwiehe

• The gas tax stalemate continues in New Jersey after Gov. Chris Christie voiced his disapproval on Monday of a tax package supported by the leaders of the state’s Senate and Assembly. While Gov. Christie’s opposition is focused mainly on the gas tax increase contained in the package, New Jersey Policy Perspective (NJPP) has voiced its disapproval of a different component: the “financially reckless” proposal to repeal the state’s estate tax. As the debate over transportation funding drags on, some observers are now speculating that by canceling construction projects, the state may be opening itself up to breach-of-contract lawsuits.
• Gov. Asa Hutchison hopes to lead Arkansas in another round of income tax cuts. This week the governor suggested that cutting the state’s top tax rate to 5 percent would make the state “competitive,” despite considerable evidence to the contrary. In reality, the most likely practical effect of such a change would be to increase the regressivity of the Arkansas tax code.
• New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill into law last week that will repeal the state’s so-called “tampon tax,” thereby joining five other states in extending sales tax exemptions for feminine hygiene products. Removing these items from the state’s sales tax base is estimated to reduce New York tax receipts by $10 million per year. Lawmakers in Florida and Illinois, among other states, have also contemplated similar exemptions in recent months.
• Without a broad-based income tax, Tennessee sometimes finds itself looking for revenue in unusual places. To that end, the state’s new fantasy sports privilege tax took effect this month. The tax sets clear rules for the taxation of daily fantasy sports sites like DraftKings and FanDuel. While five other states also took action this year to regulate and/or tax fantasy sports websites, the topic remains a gray area in most states for the time being.

What We’re Reading… 

• The Oklahoma Policy Institute released a two-part report this week that outlines proposals to improve the state’s fiscal policies and expand economic opportunity in the Sooner State.
• The Washington Post reports on a new study revealing public attitudes on how to fund transportation improvements.
• A new poll shows that Utah voters are willing pay more income taxes to better fund public education.

• The OECD calls on the G20 to lead reforms that will create more socially equitable tax systems.

If you like what you are seeing in the Rundown (or even if you don’t) please send any feedback or tips for future posts to Kelly Davis at kelly@itep.org. Click here to sign up to receive the Rundown via email. 

Few proposals generate as much agreement among economists and tax reform advocates as expanding state and local sales tax bases to include purchases of personal services.  While sales taxes typically apply quite broadly to tangible goods, purchases made in the nation’s growing service sector are all too often left out of the tax base.  As things currently stand, most states do not collect tax on sales of haircuts, carpet cleaning, massages, and swimming pool maintenance, to name just a few.  And as we explain in an updated policy brief, these wide ranging exemptions make sales taxes less adequate, less sustainable, and less fair.

Sales taxes should treat all consumers similarly regardless of whether they prefer to spend their money on goods or on services.  But implementing this ideal has proven difficult.  Only a few states—including Hawaii, New Mexico, and South Dakota—currently apply their sales taxes broadly to purchases of both goods and services.  Elsewhere, efforts to tax services have often been met with formidable resistance from exempt industries looking to preserve their preferential treatment.  In Florida and Michigan, for example, lawmakers who approved sales tax base expansions quickly backtracked and repealed those laws following a coordinated pushback from the business community.  Years later in Maine, a legislative attempt to expand the sales tax base was eventually overridden by a voter referendum supported by many businesses.

Even worse than these failures, however, are those cases where sales tax base expansion has been used to fund personal income tax cuts that have worsened the unfairness of state and local tax systems.  On this front, North Carolina is the poster child.  Lawmakers in the Tar Heel State recently managed to extend their sales tax to include more than 40 previously untaxed services such as car repairs and appliance installation, but only as part of a broader shift away from the income tax that loses revenue overall and exacerbates the regressive nature of the state’s tax system.  If an expanded sales tax base represents one step forward for North Carolina, the income tax cuts it partially funded represent at least two steps back.

But the news on the sales tax front hasn’t been all bad.  In 2012, Rhode Island expanded its sales tax base to include pet grooming and taxi fares.  In 2014, the District of Columbia (DC) updated its sales tax to cover bowling alleys, car washes, carpet cleaning, and health clubs, among other services.  The city’s successful inclusion of health clubs within the tax base was a particularly encouraging victory given the high-profile lobbying effort launched in opposition to this so-called “yoga tax.”  And finally in Maine, the sales tax was improved just last year by adding cable TV and satellite radio services to the base.

Progress toward more rational sales taxes is continuing to take place, even if it may not be happening as quickly as some of us would like.

Read ITEP’s Policy Brief: Why Sales Taxes Should Apply to Services 

The tax-related proposals in the recently released Democratic Party platform represent a meaningful victory for progressives. From advocating for the expansion of poverty-reducing tax credits to condemning corporations that avoid taxation by stashing profits offshore, the provisions outlined in the platform would improve our tax system for ordinary Americans while holding tax-dodging corporations accountable. In terms of tax justice, this year’s Democratic platform is one of the party’s most progressive in modern history.

The tax changes outlined in the pages of the Democratic Party platform would shift taxes away from lower- and middle-income Americans and towards corporations and the wealthy. For instance, the platform proposes a multimillionaire surtax “to ensure millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share” as well as a plan to ask high earners to pay more towards the Social Security fund. Plans to cut taxes for lower-income citizens include expanding the highly effective Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to childless workers, indexing the Child Tax Credit (CTC) to inflation, and “tax relief to help the millions of families caring for aging relatives or family members with chronic illnesses.”

Additionally, the platform outlines a plan to increase revenue by cracking down on tax-dodging corporations. The Democrats vow to bring an end to offshore tax havens, which the platform says “corrupt rulers, individuals, and corporations exploit to shelter ill-gotten gains or avoid paying taxes at home.”  The most important anti-tax avoidance measure in the platform is the Democrats’ plan to end deferral, a popular loophole used by corporations to escape paying taxes on profits stashed offshore. Since presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders has been a longtime champion for ending deferral, this addition to the platform represents a major shift towards Sanders’s more progressive position.

Symbolizing the progressive shift of the 2016 platform is the party’s promise to “use the revenue raised from fixing the corporate tax code to reinvest in rebuilding America and ensuring economic growth that will lead to millions of good-paying jobs.” This is a big change from the 2012 Democratic Party platform, which proposed to use funds from the closing of corporate tax loopholes to fund lower tax rates for corporations, many of which pay nothing at all in taxes. CTJ wrote in 2012 that this platform “reveals a party deeply committed to the anti-tax mindset that historically is associated with the Republican Party.” In contrast, this year’s platform emphasized the good that tax-funded public services can do, stating “we are committed to a strong, effective, accountable civil service, delivering the quality public services Americans have every right to expect.”  

While the Democratic Party platform would crack down on corporate tax misbehavior, the 2016 Republican Party platform would reward it. The GOP platform proposed to lower corporate tax rates to be “on par with, or below, the rates of other industrial nations,” ignoring the fact that a multitude of tax breaks and loopholes already enable corporations to pay well below the top tax rate. Additionally, the GOP platform advocates for individual tax evasion by promoting the repeal of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), an effective anti-tax evasion measure. Since the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimated that FATCA will return $8.7 billion that would otherwise have been lost to tax avoidance over the next decade to the U.S, this proposal would stick American taxpayers with the bill for this revenue shortfall through either increased taxation or spending cuts. In sharp contrast to the GOP plan, the Democratic Party’s new tax policy proposals would improve the lives of ordinary Americans by making corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share.

As the eyes of the U.S. turn to the Democratic National Convention this week, many people will be getting their first look at Hillary Clinton’s recently announced running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine. As one of Virginia’s current senators and the state’s former governor, Tim Kaine has supported progressive tax reform efforts, though he has occasionally taken stances at odds with those efforts—including the repeal of Virginia’s estate tax in 2006.

Kaine’s most recent tax positions appear to be largely in sync with the proposals of the Clinton campaign. Like Clinton, he has favored legislation that would close the carried interest loophole as well as the corporate inversion loophole. Furthermore, Kaine has called for raising roughly one trillion dollars in new revenue over 10 years, which is relatively in line with Clinton’s call for about $1.5 trillion in new revenue.

Most of Kaine’s positions on tax policy as both a member of Congress and governor stand in direct contrast with Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who has been a longtime advocate of supply-side economics and the tax cuts for the rich associated with that philosophy.

Governor of Virginia

As governor of Virginia, Kaine’s defining tax policy battle was his effort to raise substantial new revenues to put the state’s dwindling transportation funding sources on a more sustainable track. During each of his first three years in office, Kaine proposed raising around a billion dollars per year in transportation funding revenue largely from fees or taxes related to motor vehicles. Ultimately, Kaine’s battle with a notoriously anti-tax legislature resulted in a budget compromise that was not particularly sustainable, depending largely on debt financing and higher traffic fines.

Kaine’s other tax policy moves as governor were more of a mixed bag. Unlike Gov. Mark Warner before him, who wisely vetoed a bill that would have repealed the state’s estate tax, Gov. Kaine enthusiastically signed an estate tax repeal measure in 2006. This decision by Kaine drained valuable revenues from Virginia’s coffers and exacerbated the unfairness of the state’s tax code during a time of growing income inequality. As the Washington Post warned in an editorial leading up to repeal: “scrapping the estate tax — he single most progressive tax levied by government — sends the wrong signal at the wrong time. It sacrifices fairness for the many on the altar of special favors for the few.”

On a more positive note, Kaine did succeed in pushing progressive tax legislation in 2007 that raised the state’s income tax filing threshold substantially and slightly increased the state’s personal exemption. These changes made the state’s tax code somewhat less regressive by providing many low-income individuals with a tax cut.

On his way out of office, Kaine also offered a budget proposal that included a progressive increase in the state’s personal income tax—raising the top tax rate from 5.75 to 6.75 percent—though the idea was never taken seriously by most legislators or by then-incoming Gov. Bob McDonnell.

Senator from Virginia

While Kaine has supported relatively progressive tax policy positions during his time in the Senate, he championed a regressive tax proposal when he first ran for the Senate in 2012. At the time, Kaine proposed that rather than allowing the Bush tax cuts to be repealed for all individuals making over $250,000, they should only be repealed for those making over $500,000. To start, this proposal failed to recognize that allowing the cuts to expire for just those over $250,000 already represented a massive and problematic concession in that it would have meant extending 80 percent of the Bush tax cuts. In addition, the primary beneficiaries of his plan were not those making between $250,000-$500,000, but those making over $500,000. In fact, a CTJ analysis at the time found that 73 percent of the benefit from Kaine’s proposal would have gone to individuals making over $500,000 and 30 percent of the benefit would have gone to those making over one million dollars.

Fortunately, since Kaine was elected to the U.S. Senate, he has taken a distinctly more progressive tack on tax issues. For example, in recent years Kaine has co-sponsored a number of progressive tax proposals, including legislation to expand the earned income tax credit to childless workers, legislation that would curb inversions and legislation to close the carried interest loophole. Perhaps influenced by his time as governor, Kaine has also supported common sense legislation like the Marketplace Fairness Act, which would allow states to collect sales tax more easily from Internet retailers.

The clearest distillation of Kaine’s views on federal tax policy is the 2013 letter he sent to the Senate Finance Committee laying out his general principles on what tax reform should look like. Broadly, the letter calls for Congress to reduce or eliminate tax expenditures as a way to make the tax code simpler, more progressive and economically efficient. In addition, Kaine calls for tax reform to raise about a trillion dollars in revenue over ten years, which he would like to be used as part of a budget deal to reduce the deficit. Kaine also argues that corporate tax reform should raise revenue by closing down offshore corporate loopholes.

While Kaine has not been a leader in the fight for more progressive taxation on the federal level, he has been a consistent supporter of progressive tax legislation.

In 2015, Citigroup reported to the Security and Exchange Commission that it has 21 offshore subsidiary companies, but it reported to the Federal Reserve that it has 140. Similarly, Bank of America reported to the SEC that it has 21 subsidiaries while reporting to the Federal Reserve that it has 109. All told, 27 financial firms report wildly different numbers to the SEC v. Federal Reserve.

So what gives and which reporting is accurate? It turns out that SEC has less stringent reporting rules, requiring companies only to disclose “significant” subsidiaries. It defines significant as comprising 10 percent or more of the company’s assets. The Federal Reserve requires broader disclosure, but only for financial companies. A CTJ comparison of the disclosures revealed big banks and other financial firms collectively are under reporting to the SEC the number of subsidiary companies by a factor of more than seven.

Because Federal Reserve requires subsidiary reporting only for financial firms, it’s impossible to fully know the extent to which other Fortune 500 corporations fail to disclose their subsidiaries. But if financial companies’ reporting practices are representative of other corporations, then it is likely under reporting is pervasive.

This week, the SEC closed its comment period for an exposure draft, which is part of its review of disclosure requirements. CTJ, in written comments, urged the SEC to mandate greater corporate transparency by requiring companies to publically disclose all their subsidiaries. Such a requirement would prevent companies from gaming which subsidies they disclose, and it would provide the public and investors with a clearer picture of how public companies operate.

Another critical failure in SEC disclosure requirements is that companies can avoid specifying how much they owe in U.S. taxes on their “offshore” income by claiming that providing this calculation is not practicable. Eighty-two percent of Fortune 500 companies with untaxed offshore earnings used this loophole to avoid revealing what they would owe in taxes. Because of this, the public and investors are unable to determine whether and to what extent companies are engaging in offshore tax avoidance. A study by the financial firm Credit Suisse found that many large companies, including General Electric and Xerox, could face tax liabilities representing 10 percent or more of their total market capitalization. In other words, SEC rules enable corporations to obscure critical information about the financial health of a company.

As CTJ’s SEC comments note, the best way to bring transparency to companies’ offshore operations would be to require companies to report their tax and related information (such as income, number of employees, revenue, etc.) on a country-by-country basis. Companies already keep track of this information for accounting purposes and will soon have to send this information to the IRS anyway, so reporting it in a SEC filing would require no real additional cost.

For more read CTJ’s full comment to the SEC

A new report by Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) finds that the U.S. government is failing to meet clean energy goals due in part to opposition from public utility companies, which account for a third of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. What’s more, federal and state tax policies that create inefficient business incentives lie at the heart of the problem.

The combined pretax income of 40 profitable public utility companies was $42.95 billion in 2015; however, these companies paid only $1.6 billion in federal and state corporate income taxes. From 2008 to 2012, these 40 utility companies had an effective tax rate of 2.9 percent, the lowest of any industry. The statutory federal tax rate on corporations is 35 percent. If utility companies paid the same effective federal rate as the retail sector, 29.6 percent, and paid the full state rates, the federal and state governments would have a total of $14.06 billion in additional revenue.

How do utility companies get away with paying a single-digit tax rate? Among other tax breaks, the most lucrative loophole utility companies use is accelerated depreciation. This tax break allows companies to deduct the cost of certain capital investments (such as on equipment) from their taxes at a rate faster than those investments depreciate in value. To wit, the 23 utilities companies that paid no federal taxes in 2015 received a combined total of $11.5 billion in tax benefits from depreciation. American taxpayers, on the other hand, are effectively taxed twice on their energy consumption: once at the end of the month when they pay their utility bills, and again to pay for the tax breaks utility companies receive annually. The tax policy problems highlighted by utility companies are just a few of the many problems with our corporate tax structure. Immediate and drastic action is needed to reform our corporate tax code to incentivize public utilities and other companies to work in the interests of the American public.

The ultimate goal of IPS and other environmental advocates is to overcome utility companies’ opposition to clean energy practices. Part of the challenge is that utility companies and their surrogates claim they do not have the funds to invest in clean technology, yet they are among the most profitable and undertaxed corporations in the country.

Rather than letting utilities get away with not paying their fair share, lawmakers should end or reform costly and ineffective tax breaks, such as accelerated depreciation, that allow utility and other companies to pay low tax rates. More broadly, utilities, and all corporations, should be required to report the taxes they pay in each state in which they operate in addition to their federal taxes.

Aaron Mendelson, a CTJ intern, contributed to this report.

In the Tax Justice Digest we recap the latest reports, blog posts, and analyses from Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Here’s a rundown of what we’ve been working on lately.

The Most Egregious Tax Policy Proposals in the 2016 Republican Party Platform

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, tax cuts for the rich do not deliver on trickle-down promises. This fact matters little, apparently, as the RNC policy platform includes ill-advised tax cuts that would exacerbate rising income inequality and add to annual federal budget deficits. Read more.

Donald Trump’s Tax Plan: How to Sell a Dream

We keep hearing that conservative economists are working with Donald Trump’s campaign to propose a less costly tax plan—that would still cut taxes for the rich, of course. We’ve yet to see said plan, so Trump’s proposal at the moment still stands. Check out our new explainer video that briefly explores why Trump’s profligate tax cut proposal, which would cost just as much as all discretionary spending, is problematic and unrealistic.  Watch the CTJ video here.

Political Conventions Spark Better Tax Policy

The sharing economy service Airbnb is no stranger to controversy, from equal access for all patrons to customers reporting income earned via the service. A new blog by ITEP research director Carl Davis takes a look at how, in preparation for the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, Cleveland and Pennsylvania took swift action to ensure that their lodging taxes applied to Airbnb apartment and room rentals. Read Carl’s blog post.

CTJ to SEC: Beef Up Reporting Requirements

U.S. banks report to the Federal Reserve far more offshore subsidiary companies than what they report to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Bank of America, for example, reported to the SEC that it has 21 tax haven subsidiaries, but it reported 109 to the Federal Reserve. The bigger number of the two is likely the truth. BofA and other big banks get away with underreporting subsidiary information to the SEC because the agency allows corporations to forego disclosing certain data if corporations deem it too onerous. SEC today closed its comment period on reporting requirements. CTJ submitted comments. If reading technical comments isn’t your thing, read this recent blog post or this recent report that make a strong, compelling case for why SEC should require corporations to be forthright about their offshore subsidiaries and holdings.  Read CTJ’s comments here.

Pennsylvania Passes Revenue Plan Necessary to Fund State Budget

ITEP senior analyst Aidan Russell Davis shares both the good and bad news from the recent budget agreement reached by Pennsylvania lawmakers. Read Aidan’s blog post.

State Rundown

In this week’s Rundown we highlight state tax news in Alaska, Massachusetts, Mississippi, North Dakota, and Cleveland. Read the Rundown and check out our “What We’re Reading” section here.

Shareable Tax Analysis:

If you have any feedback on the Digest or tax stories you’re watching that we should check out too please email me  kelly@itep.org

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For frequent updates find us on Twitter (CTJ/ITEP), Facebook (CTJ/ITEP), and at the Tax Justice blog.

The Republican Party’s official 2016 platform, released on Monday, is wholly out of touch with reality. The plan would exacerbate the dual problems of rising inequality and continuous annual federal budget deficits with tax cuts that essentially put more money into the pockets of wealthy people and corporations and reduce federal revenues.

Some of the most troubling tax policy proposals:

1. Move the U.S. to a territorial tax system.

Under the heading “A Competitive America,” the GOP platform calls for the United States to “switch to a territorial system of taxation,” stating that such a system would help drive more investment and economic growth. In reality, a territorial tax system would create greater incentive for companies to shift profits and jobs offshore.

Under a territorial tax system, U.S. companies would no longer be required to pay tax on offshore profits. Such a system would encourage U.S. companies to move jobs and investments because they could take advantage of low- or zero-tax rates in tax haven countries. On top of this, U.S. companies would have more opportunities to avoid taxes under a territorial tax system because once they are able to artificially shift their U.S. profits offshore, they would never face any U.S. tax on these profits.

One striking thing about the GOP embrace of a territorial tax system is that Donald Trump proposes the opposite. His plan would end deferral and implement a full worldwide tax system.

2. Substantially lower corporate tax rates.

The GOP platform claims that American businesses face “the world’s highest corporate tax rates” and that the U.S. should lower its rate to be “on par with, or below, the rates of other industrial nations.” The key issue is that the GOP platform writers are only paying attention to the statutory U.S. rate, while ignoring the plethora of tax breaks and loopholes that enable most companies to pay well below the top rate. In fact, according to data from the OECD, the U.S. already has an effective corporate tax rate that places it just below the average rate of industrial nations. If the GOP succeeded in lowering the statutory rate to 25 or 20 percent, the most likely result would be a massive loss in revenue from one of the country’s most progressive sources of funding.

3. Enact a strict balanced budget amendment and require a supermajority vote to increase taxes.

One the more understated yet critically important tax policy proposals in the GOP platform is its call for a radical version of a balanced budget amendment that would not only require the budget to be in perfect balance each year, but would also place a cap on total spending and require a supermajority vote for any tax increase. A balanced budget amendment would cause a myriad of problems, but the most important is that it would restrict the ability of government spending to counteract recession through stepped up government spending.

The spending restraints would place a stranglehold on lawmakers’ ability to make any additional public investments and would likely require substantial spending cuts. In addition, it could make closing even the most egregious of tax loopholes impossible because closing such loopholes could require a supermajority vote. Many state governments have found themselves continuously hamstrung by such spending and revenue-raising restrictions.

4. Repeal FATCA

The GOP platform takes aims at the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) anti-tax evasion 2010 legislation by specifically calling for its repeal. The key provision of the law is a requirement that foreign banks and foreign branches of U.S. banks share information on the accounts of U.S. citizens and residents with the IRS or face a harsh withholding tax. Access to this information will allow the IRS to track down those individuals who have been evading U.S. taxes by holding their assets in undeclared offshore accounts. The Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimated that FATCA will help the IRS claw back $8.7 billion that would otherwise have been lost to tax evasion over the next decade.

In other words, the GOP platform is effectively advocating for tax evaders who would benefit to the tune of billions of dollars if the legislation is repealed.

5. Oppose any further increase in the gas tax.

In its section on transportation policy, the GOP platform opposes any increase in the federal gas tax, despite the fact that the federal gas tax has not been raised since 1993. Because of inflation, this means that the value of the 18.4 cent per gallon level has eroded nearly 40 percent over the past two decades. This erosion in value has led to a perpetual lack of revenue to adequately fund the infrastructure spending programs that lawmakers support, which has led them to embrace less- than-ideal funding sources for making up the difference. Last year for example, Congress essentially searched under the couch cushions for infrastructure funding by paying for it with things like higher user fees on unrelated transactions and selling off oil from the strategic petroleum reserve.

Rather than continuing its piecemeal approach, Congress should shore up transportation funding by increasing the gas tax now and indexing it to inflation. 

The theme of day two of the Republican National Convention was “Make America Work Again,” but there was mostly fire and brimstone (even a mention of Lucifer) and little concrete discussion about how to boost workforce participation rates, create more good-paying jobs, and ensure more American workers have the skills necessary to access good-paying jobs.   

For now, the only tangible details the public has about how a Trump Administration allegedly would put Americans to work are his business record and his economic policy proposals. Others have done a keen job of dissecting his business record and projecting what it could mean for a Trump Administration. So we won’t opine on that. But we’ll continue to trumpet the fact that Trump’s tax proposals will not benefit working people, the constituency on whose behalf he claims he is campaigning.

Earlier this year, CTJ released an analysis of Trump’s national debt-inflating tax proposal. Since then, the candidate has been cagey about his real intentions. And a few people affiliated with the campaign have said he’s cooking up a revised plan (that will still focus on tax cuts, of course).  For now, rather than submit to frequent whiplash and reading tea leaves, we’ll assume the proposal that remains on his campaign website is the one he intends to pursue if elected president.

And that proposal, aside from inflating the national debt, would deliver a windfall to the top 1 percent of taxpayers. If Franklin Roosevelt was a traitor to his class, then Donald Trump is an ally to his class whose tax policies would accelerate a reprehensible, slow return to the gilded age. 

Watch: