Trump Thinks Corporations Could Use More Tax Cuts

Back in December 2017, Donald Trump and the GOP passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, claiming the bill was going to change the lives of the middle class because that sounded better than “banks need more money.” The legislation, of course, had very little to do with the middle class and everything to do with saving corporations billions by lowering their tax rate from 35% to 21%. In practice, the law resulted in many of these multinational companies—already experts at minimizing their tax bills—paying rates of 11.3%, 0%, and, in some cases, getting a refund despite earning millions or billions in income. Amazon, for example, paid an effective tax rate of below zero in 2018 on income of $10.8 billion, while Wall Street banks saved a combined $18 billion on taxes in 2019 despite a record $120 billion in net income. In short, these companies are doing pretty, pretty, pretty well thanks to the bill, but the Trump administration has thought about it and decided they could actually use a little more government welfare.

Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told the crowd that Trump wants to slash the corporate tax rate again, down to 20%. One, because he prioritizes the profits of corporate America and the uber wealthy over everything else, and two, because he has the mind of a child and 20 sounds better to him than 21. “We need to do the second part of the tax bill—we really do, Tax Cuts 2.0,” Mulvaney said when asked what Trump’s second-term priorities would entail. “He never liked the fact the corporate tax is 21%—he always wanted it to be 20. ‘Mick, 20 is a better number than 21,’” Mulvaney added, doing an impression of the president.

And that’s not the only new tax cut the administration has in mind. In addition, Mulvaney said that a proposal to adjust capital gains taxes for inflation, which would almost exclusively benefit the super rich, is on the table. Currently, when an asset like a stock or real estate is sold, the amount of tax paid on the appreciation is tied to inflation, so at present corporate stock with dividends held for 10 years would be subject to an effective tax rate of roughly 24.3%. Under the proposed plan, the same holding would be subject to a rate of just 21.4%. According to a 2018 estimate by the Penn Wharton Budget Model, the top 1% would receive a whopping 86% of the benefit.

The notion of slashing taxes for corporations—which are experiencing record profits—is, of course, a tad rich given that the move effectively amounts to government welfare, even though the president is currently trying to kick millions of people off of food stamps. He’s also recently confirmed that Medicare would likely be on the chopping block in a second term and proposed taking away heat from the poor to help fund the coronavirus response. But hey, Jeff Bezos probably does need another $165 million house, so enjoy!

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Report: Mike Bloomberg doesn’t like it when people write totally reasonable things about his billionaire friends

You bite your tongue when you’re talking about Mike’s equally rich pals! Per ProPublica:

When stories angered Bloomberg’s friends, [Bloomberg LP] reporters heard about it. “People would say, ‘That’s a friend of Mike’s,’ or mostly they’d just say ‘FOM,’” former Bloomberg reporter Mary Childs said. In 2015, Bloomberg complained at an editors’ meeting that reporters were going too far in their coverage of the rich. He cited as an example a recent story about Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. Bloomberg told the group of editors that a reference to Blankfein’s residences in the New York area was an invasion of privacy. After this, editors told the billionaires team to go back and erase addresses and pictures of billionaires’ homes from their biographies on the Bloomberg terminal and website. A Bloomberg spokesperson said reporters have not been told to go easy on billionaires or Bloomberg’s friends, “and if you look at our published work, that is completely untrue.”