| Superman4 said: Please explain how raising the level of zero tax to 24K, doubling the standard deduction for both single and married while lowering the majority of americans tax bracket from 15% to 12% is raising taxes? Also increasing the child tax credit from 1K to 1600 and adding a $300 per person credit per adult dependant is raising taxes? This will lower taxes for all true middle class people, not the BS ones that have a million dollar home and say they are middle class. |
Gladly:
1) Through deductions, most of the people making within the raised zero tax level were already paying nothing. This makes things easier but not really much cheaper.
2) While the standard deduction is increased, many itemized deductions have been eliminated which again leaves most people close to breaking even, or possibly paying more if they were in a situation which benefited from deductions (ie States with high income taxes, families with numerous children, people with high student loan interest, people with high medical bills, etc).
3) Similar to above, while the child tax credit is increased from 1k to 1.6k, they are cutting the dependent exemption of $4k. That means for middle and upper income families with multiple children, the extra $600 of credits may not cover the loss of $4000 of exemptions.
And for an analysis of where the savings go if you want to look past how things sound in theory and into how they work in practice, look to the Tax Policy Center's analysis of the Unified Framework plan:
As you can see, middle and low income individuals get around a 0.2% to 1% boost in after tax income on average (as previously stated, depending on specific situations certain individuals will be paying more) while those in the top 5% of income get about an 8-10% boost in after tax income. Virtually all of the direct benefit of this plan falls onto corporations and the very wealthy.
Now, you might be thinking "well a cup of coffee is better than nothing", but you also have to consider the effects of decreased government revenue on different populations. Primarily the negative impacts of increased federal debt which is felt by everybody and in the long term could easily overtake any miniscule benefit these tax breaks have on the poor and middle class. Then there is how government outlays have to adapt to lowered revenue. As we have seen with the Republican budget, this typically involves cutting programs which disproportionately help the poor such as Medicare/Medicaid and the SNAP program, which will often leave lower income individuals having to pay more out of pocket, reducing their real spending power.
