What do you think of the Cruz tax plan?
https://www.tedcruz.org/tax_plan_summary/


I do not support Cruz and am not interested in general opinion of him. I am simply interested in opinions of his tax plan. What do you think are the pros and cons?

All tax plans look good on their own. What tax plans really need to do is explain how they will raise enough money in order to (1) pay for current government services, (2) pay for any new programs Cruz wants to implement, and (3) pay off the deficit.

If a tax plan can't do any one of those, it's a bad plan.

I don't see how a 10% flat tax on personal income, and a 16% flat tax on business income will solve any of the above, but mostly (3). It seems like the US government would be taking in much less in taxes under such a plan.

Things I do agree on though:

1) The first $X shouldn't be taxable. The X would change according to the situation (i.e a family of 4 would have a higher X than a family of 2)
2) Obamacare penalties should be abolished. Obamacare is good, but people shouldn't be forced to buy healthcare if they don't want it, or punished by the IRS if they don't have it.
3) Death tax / inheritance tax should be abolished. Money / assets have already been subjected to taxes, so it makes no sense to subject them to taxes again.

I'm not a fan. The Tax Policy Center estimates that the Cruz plan would reduce government revenue by $8.6 trillion over the first 10 years, and an additional $12.2 trillion over the next 10.

Quote:“Imagine 4.9 million new jobs. Instead of Obama’s income stagnation, imagine average wages rising 12.2 percent over the next decade. Capital investment rising 43.9 percent. And every income-level seeing double-digit increases in after-tax income. Imagine exports and manufacturing jobs booming. Our trade deficit falling as the tax bias against American made goods is eliminated. Imagine a 10 percent income tax, with every American filling out his or her taxes on a postcard or iPhone app. And abolishing the IRS as we know it.”

I think the growth numbers Cruz cites are a pipe dream, and if the Fed can't replace the lost revenue you can forget about driving the economy into a ditch. We'll be driving it over a cliff.

(March 6, 2016 at 11:54 am)Tiberius Wrote: I don't see how a 10% flat tax on personal income, and a 16% flat tax on business income will solve any of the above, but mostly (3). It seems like the US government would be taking in much less in taxes under such a plan.

Perhaps the cost of the tax burden would offset it.
http://www.laffercenter.com/wp-content/u...lexity.pdf

Page 3

This study creates a comprehensive estimate of the total administrative costs, time costs, and direct tax compli- ance costs created by the complex U.S. federal income tax code. is paper deals only with Segments B, C, D and E from Figure ES 1. One can only imagine what the full burden of government on the well-being of society might be. In our analysis we estimate that U.S. taxpayers pay $431.1 billion annually, or 30 percent of total income taxes collected, just to comply with and administer the U.S. income tax system.* is cost estimate includes:• Approximately $31.5 billion in direct outlays (e.g. paying a professional tax preparer such as H&R Block or purchasing tax so ware) (2010 data).• TotalIRSadministrativecostsof$12.4billion(2010data).• e Taxpayer Advocacy Service of the IRS estimates that individuals and businesses also spent 6.1 billion hours complying with the ling requirements of the U.S. income tax code. We estimate the dollar value or cost of these hours to be $377.9 billion as of 2008. e 6.1 billion hours number was estimated by multiplying the number of copies of each form led in tax year 2008 by the average amount of time the IRS estimated it took to complete the form.• Individuals spent 3.16 billion hours complying with the income tax code, which weighted by time spent by income group, costs the U.S. economy $216.2 billion annually.• Businesses spent 2.94 billion complying with the business income tax code, which costs the U.S. econo- my $161.7 billion.• Comprehensive audits also impose an additional taxpayer burden of at least $9.3 billion annually.

Quote:2) Obamacare penalties should be abolished. Obamacare is good, but people shouldn't be forced to buy healthcare if they don't want it, or punished by the IRS if they don't have it.

It looks like the Obamacare benefits the insurance companies more than anything. It is not a single payer healthcare plan that was sold to the American people. It was Obama paying his rich pals in the insurance business.

(March 6, 2016 at 12:18 pm)KUSA Wrote: It looks like the Obamacare benefits the insurance companies more than anything. It is not a single payer healthcare plan that was sold to the American people. It was Obama paying his rich pals in the insurance business.

I wonder if you could become any more obnoxious?

(March 6, 2016 at 12:21 pm)Mermaid Wrote:

(March 6, 2016 at 12:18 pm)KUSA Wrote: It looks like the Obamacare benefits the insurance companies more than anything. It is not a single payer healthcare plan that was sold to the American people. It was Obama paying his rich pals in the insurance business.

I wonder if you could become any more obnoxious?

Is that what you really want?

http://taxpolicycenter.org/UploadedPDF/2...x-plan.pdf

This .pdf does not translate well into the board's cut and paste system but it shows Cruz' plan blowing an enormous hole in the budget.... (to be closed by fucking the poor and middle classes, certainly not the rich and the military, I presume) while providing massive tax cuts to the rich and a pittance for the poor.

It's always the same shit with these bastards.

One good thing that Obamacare did do was make it illegal for insurance companies to reject people with pre-existing conditions. That was a very good change IMO.

(March 6, 2016 at 12:18 pm)KUSA Wrote: It looks like the Obamacare benefits the insurance companies more than anything. It is not a single payer healthcare plan that was sold to the American people. It was Obama paying his rich pals in the insurance business.

The ACA was a compromise. Obama wanted a single payer system. Congress wouldn't give it to him. As far as the individual mandate goes we can't have some of the good things about the ACA like eliminating restrictions based on preexisting conditions or low lifetime maximum payouts without paying for it. The individual mandate is a tax that pays for insurance for sick people by spreading the cost to healthy people. We might be able to save billions by cutting the for profit insurance industry out of the middle, but that would mean the government would have to administer any single payer system at least as efficiently as private industry does. Frankly I'm not sure they are capable of that.

Quote:Congress wouldn't give it to him.

To be fair, which I rarely am, one cannot blame the republicunts for that.  If the democrats could have gotten their shit together they could have passed it without worrying about them.  But there were a handful of blue-dog dems - essentially conservatives - who blocked it.