As congressional Democrats misleadingly claim their tax hikes will only fall on the wealthy and large corporations, they have pledged to include major carveouts that benefit the wealthy.
In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, former Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX), a former chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and Mark Solon, partner of US Policy Metrics walk through some of the worst excesses:
- “The Democrats’ tax-the-rich ruse is further evident in their pledge to remove the cap on the state and local tax deduction, or SALT. Restoring the SALT deduction would provide tax cuts for very high earners in high-taxing blue states—again, many of the same people that Democrats claim don’t pay their fair share.”
- “If there is anything economists agree on—and there isn’t much—it’s that all taxes imposed on corporations fall in part on the consumers of their products and in part on their stockholders and workers. Workers pay between 50% and 70% of the corporate tax that isn’t passed on to consumers in higher prices. The record growth in real wages after the 2017 corporate tax cuts, especially among low-income, minority and disadvantaged workers, bears this out.”
- “So when corporate tax rates are raised, it’s workers and their pensions, retirement accounts and insurance investments, which own 72% of America’s stockholder equity, who pay most of those taxes.”