Trump's tax plans

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In Chapter 3 of White House Burning, James Kwak and I reviewed what happened after the tax cuts enacted in 2001 under George W. Bush. Great promises were made about the cuts, including that they would help most Americans. But while they did help rich people become richer, there is no evidence that they delivered faster growth or higher incomes for the middle class. Instead, they boosted the budget deficit and contributed significantly to increasing the US national debt (by around $3 trillion through 2010), which weakened the government’s ability to respond to crises, either in terms of national security or financial instability..

America’s Tax-Cut Peronists by Simon Johnson - Project Syndicate

Unfortunately for the American middle class, Ryan is lying. The hypothetical family his top spokesperson AshLee Strong described would get a tax cut of almost $1,200 — for one year. It gets smaller in year two, smaller still in year three, smaller still in year four, and smaller still in year five. It nearly vanishes in the sixth year of the Ryan tax plan, and in years seven, eight, nine, and 10 the family would be paying higher taxes than under current law. That tax hike is not only permanent, it actually grows over time because of a change to the inflation indexing of tax brackets. On average, over the entire 10-year scoring window, the family would get a total tax cut of $3,550. Yet over the same time period, the national debt would grow by $4,644 per person — or about $18,500 for a family of four. There’s nothing wrong with running a budget deficit if you’re accomplishing something worthwhile. But to go $18,500 in debt in order to secure a $3,550 tax cut is preposterous. And yet something like that is an inevitable consequence of the Republican tax plan’s original decision — an unpopular and unworkable scheme to reduce the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent.

The Republican tax plan’s original sin - Vox