“One thing Mr. Trump has made clear is that he wants this to be a middle-class tax cut,” Moore said Friday, the day after the Trump Tower meeting. “What he has told us is that you have to get the cost down, and we have to do it in a way that benefits middle-class voters and families.”

Standard Deduction

By last month, they’d whittled the cost to $3.8 trillion -- but at the expense of some middle-class benefits, according to the Tax Foundation’s Pomerleau. First, they bumped up Trump’s proposed tax rates -- the top rate went from 25 to 28 percent, and the lowest from 10 to 15 percent. They also scaled back Trump’s proposal to quadruple the “standard deduction,” which tends to benefit middle- and low-income taxpayers. Trump proposed to raise it to $25,000 from $6,300; Moore and Kudlow suggest $10,000.

The smaller increase “would drastically shrink any benefits to the middle class,” Pomerleau said. Overall, the Moore and Kudlow changes “erase one of the big selling points Trump has had, which is cutting taxes for the middle class,” he said.

Moore shrugged off a question about whether Trump has rejected the suggestion. He said he and Kudlow still recommend it.

Laffer Curve

Both men served as advisers to President Ronald Reagan. Their work for Trump is backed by economist Arthur Laffer, whose “Laffer Curve” provided much of the underpinnings for Reagan’s tax policies. With Moore and Kudlow’s input, Trump’s plan “will be a humdinger,” Laffer said in a telephone interview.

Moore specified one suggested tweak that would hit higher-income taxpayers: capping itemized deductions. Trump has called for “reducing or eliminating most deductions and loopholes available to the very rich” but his plan provides few details. Moore said he and Kudlow have suggested capping deductions at $50,000. “It wouldn’t affect middle-class people,” but when people like Warren Buffett or Bill Gates “make a billion-dollar giveaway, they can only write off $50,000,” he said.

“The Trump team has said, ‘You might want to keep the charitable deduction,”’ Moore said. Whether Trump will accept that change “hasn’t been decided,” he said.

Another Trump proposal would impose a flat 15 percent income tax on all businesses -- from mom-and-pop groceries to Fortune 500 corporations -- down from the current top corporate tax rate of 35 percent. “I can’t really say whether that’s set in stone or not,” Moore said.