Hey, Michael Sean!: Giving tax reform a bad name

Hey, Michael Sean!: Giving tax reform a bad name: https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/signs-times/giving-tax-reform-bad-name MGB:_..I got interested in tax policy in graduate school, when I learned about the demands of Catholic Social Teaching for a living wage based on family size, which along with my commitment to corporate socialism, which was really cooperative socialsm, was called Fiscal Communism. I later found out that Milton Friedman had the same idea, called the negative income tax and that President Ford had enacted it as a child tax credit.

In 1998, Ways and Means and Bill Clinton were talking about Social Security reform and I started making comments for the record and sharing them, often the old fashioned way, by mail. I also joined some online conversations on tax reform, replacing income taxes with a business income tax that filed taxes on what was already being withheld and then distributed tax benefits like the child tax credit. This is a good idea for working class households, but I have always believed that wealthier households should continue to pay a separate income tax.

In 2002, President Bush had a Social Security commission which I contributed to, consolidating these commets into an article for Labor and Corporate Governance in January 2003. (the second part on corporate governnace and wage equity was not printed). In 2005, I submitted testimony to the President’s Tax Reform Task Force, whcih included by two-part business income tax and corporate income surtax. These were included in my book, Musings from the Christian Left.

In 2011, Ways and Means and Finance began hearings on tax reform, while the Fiscal Commission also began deliberations on how to cut enough spending to deal with the expiration of the Bush Tax Cuts. For the next few years, I responded to each congressional hearing on tax reform, health care and Social Security, which were frequent until the passage of the American Tax Relief Act of 2013, which essentially gave President Obama exactly what he ran on, preserving tax cuts for the bottom 98% and letting them go back to Clinton levels for the top 2%. Corporate Tax reform was left on the agenda and dislike of Obama left it there.. I put forth a four point program as follows:

• A Value Added Tax (VAT) to fund domestic military spending and domestic discretionary spending with a rate between 10% and 13%, which makes sure very American pays something.
• Personal income surtaxes on joint and widowed filers with net annual incomes of $100,000 and single filers earning $50,000 per year to fund net interest payments, debt retirement and overseas and strategic military spending and other international spending, with graduated rates between 5% and 25%.  
• Employee contributions to Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) with a lower income cap, which allows for lower payment levels to wealthier retirees without making bend points more progressive.
• A VAT-like Net Business Receipts Tax (NBRT), which is essentially a subtraction VAT with additional tax expenditures for family support,  health care and the private delivery of governmental services, to fund entitlement spending and replace income tax filing for most people (including people who file without paying), the corporate income tax, business tax filing through individual income taxes and the employer contribution to OASI, all payroll taxes for hospital insurance, disability insurance, unemployment insurance and survivors under age 60.

Hearings started again when Kevin Brady became chairman of Ways and Means and continued through the release of introduction of the Tax and Job Cuts Act in the House, although the Senate held additional hearings before mark-up. It is certainly not what I spent the last The Bill contains nothing for the working or middle class and everything for corporations and the executive class. It essentially undoes Obama’s tax poliicies. It will lead to another boom and bust and give every incentive to companies to cut costs and give the savings to CEOs and stockholders. Even if the bill could be made bipartisan, it is rotten at the core and must be killed. My testimony on that can be found at  http://fiscalequity.blogspot.com/2017/11/tax-and-job-cuts-act.html

The standard deduction should be increased, but to four times what is proposed, with consumption taxes replacing that revenue and much higher taxes on the rich, as well as much more generous child tax credit increases to the levels USDA estimates are required to raise a child. That $1000 per child per month should come with pay, but as a carve out from base pay. Gift taxes are irrelevant. If they are still extant, then rates must be higher. Either way, the rich need to start paying down the debt before their children have to pay it back with still higher taxes. It should never be paid back by the working class. It is time to end the bondholder aristocracy started by Hamilton which this bill seeks to continue.