Trump Economist Wants to Give Rich People Another Tax Break, Without a Vote in Congress

[babylonsister]

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/03/kudlow-wants-new-tax-cut-for-rich-without-vote-in-congress.html?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=s3&utm_campaign=sharebutton-t

March 20, 2018 3:59 pm
Trump Economist Wants to Give Rich People Another Tax Break, Without a Vote in Congress
By Jonathan Chait


The Trump administration’s new National Economic Council director, Lawrence Kudlow, has a lifelong monomaniacal obsession with reducing taxes for the rich. Unfortunately for Kudlow and his boss, Republicans have already used up their one-per-session budget reconciliation bill, which would allow them to pass a tax cut bill with a majority vote in the Senate, unlike the normal 60-vote requirement. And since Democrats aren’t about to support another tax cut for the rich — zero supported the last one — they’re stuck for this term.

Or are they? The Wall Street Journal’s Richard Rubin reports that Kudlow is interested in applying an inflation index to the capital gains tax. “Some believe Potus could do it as exec order,” he told Rubin via email.

The policy Kudlow is describing would reduce the amount of taxable income paid by people who receive income from capital gains (mostly, by selling stock). As it stands, right now, if you bought $1,000 worth of stock, and sold it ten years later for $1,500, you would pay tax on the $500 you gained.

snip//

Republicans have been proposing this change for a long time but have never enacted it, in part because Democrats have opposed it as a complicated change that would give rich people a windfall for no serious economic benefit. The Congressional Budget Office published a paper analyzing it back in 1990. Kudlow is proposing that Trump would just go ahead and order the IRS to implement this change on its own, via executive order.

If Trump does this, would it stand up in court to a legal challenge? Probably not, since Congress obviously did not intend to make this change when it wrote capital gains tax laws —but you never know what judge you might get.

Of course, Republicans might oppose such a move because of their long-standing principled belief, expressed repeatedly during the Obama administration, that the president should not bypass Congress to enact unilateral— ha ha ha, obviously they don’t actually care about that stuff anymore.

[standingtall]

1. Not an expert but pretty sure

the constitution says something like Congress may collect taxes from whatever sources derive. So the executive branch cannot reduce a tax without the approval of congress.

[pansypoo53219]

2. greater depression here we go.