What kind of president would a selfish con man like Donald Trump be? A promoter of policies that protect his own investments and bottom line but cost the federal government — and indirectly, America’s working families — trillions in lost revenue that could otherwise be allocated to essential programs.
For some reason, when Trump announced his tax plan that has a “$10 trillion or more” price tag and disproportionately boosts the top 1%, he didn’t mention that it would also protect his own real estate investments at the expense of government tax revenues.
From an Allan Sloan op-ed in Wednesday’s Washington Post:
When you ask the right question — as I did — you find out that there’s a 13-digit difference between Trump’s [tax] proposal and the one House Republicans unveiled in June.
We’re talking a difference of $1.2 trillion. Even by the standards of today’s big numbers and hyperbolic rhetoric, that’s serious money.
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One of the key revenue raisers in the Republican tax-cut plan is ending interest deductions on business loans that are taken out after the plan goes into effect (if it ever does). That would partially offset the huge tax cuts the plan proposes for businesses and individuals.
But ending the interest deductibility on new loans would devastate the value of commercial real estate — which is a major business for Trump.
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I couldn’t understand how Trump, immersed in commercial real estate, could possibly support such a proposal, no matter how much he and congressional Republicans wanted to show that they were on the same team.
So I sent an email to Hope Hicks of the Trump campaign asking what was going on. The answer, which I got from Larry Kudlow, economist, TV guy and an informal adviser to the Trump campaign, is that Trump doesn’t support that change.
Read more here.
Published: Aug 18, 2016