Donald Trump has said his main tax-policy goal is a cut for the middle class, yet his guest list for a series of policy presentations at Trump Tower included a Reagan-era economist who has suggested revamping that plan.
Lobbyists and business leaders, including oil billionaire and Trump ally Harold Hamm, gathered June 9 at the presumptive Republican nominee’s New York headquarters to present their policy wish lists. Among them: economist Stephen Moore, who has been offering Trump advice on tax policy -- particularly suggestions for cutting his plan’s estimated cost of $10 trillion over 10 years.
But Moore and fellow conservative economist Lawrence Kudlow have recommended changes that would “all but erase” the middle-class benefits Trump favors, according to Kyle Pomerleau, a senior policy specialist at the right-leaning Tax Foundation in Washington. The foundation, a non-profit research group, reviewed the revisions at the request of Moore and Kudlow.
‘Pro-Growth Juice’
Trump hasn’t committed to any of their suggestions, and spokeswoman Hope Hicks told the New York Times last month that Moore and Kudlow don’t speak for the campaign. Nonetheless, Moore’s appearance at Thursday’s Trump Tower conclave -- where he said he was one of the presenters -- suggests that the final contours of Trump’s tax plan remain under discussion.
“At some point, there will be a ‘Trump 2.0’ tax plan with the basic integrity of what he proposes, but with some refinements so that it has pro-growth juice in it,” said Moore, a visiting fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington. Trump’s campaign didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment.
The candidate called his own tax plan into question last month when he described it as merely a starting point for negotiations with Congress and said taxpayers with higher incomes might have to pay more than he has proposed. “I am so much more into the middle class, who have just been absolutely forgotten in our country,” Trump said on CNBC.
Three Brackets
His published plan calls for large across-the-board cuts for individuals and businesses. Trump wants to consolidate the current seven individual income-tax brackets to three. At the bottom, married filers who earn less than $50,000 a year would pay no federal income tax. At the top, individuals who earn $150,000 or more would pay a top rate of 25 percent, down from the current 39.6 percent.
But the cost of Trump’s plan has stirred concern across the political spectrum; it’s been Moore and Kudlow’s challenge to try find ways to cut it. By contrast, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s tax plan, which includes tax increases on those with high incomes, higher tax rates on certain types of investment income and a higher estate-tax rate, would mean $191 billion in new federal revenue over a decade, according to the Tax Foundation’s analysis. The foundation is a research center whose board includes tax officials from Eli Lilly & Co., PepsiCo Inc. and Microsoft Corp.