======= ======= ====== ====== ====== ===== ==== ====== ====== ===== ==== ======= ======= ====== ====== ====== ===== ==== ====== ====== ===== ====
Donald Trump. The President of The United States of America. Your President. My President. If you voted for him, congrats. If you didn’t vote for him, it’s time to accept the results and move on. Personally, I preferred the guy who had zero chance of winning and didn’t know what Aleppo was (good effort, Gary), but here we are. The guy from TV with the hilarious twitter feed is now our leader. As absurd as this entire election process has been, I’m genuinely optimistic and excited to see what the Trump administration is able to accomplish.
As a 32-year-old family man and business owner, I was curious to gain a better understanding of Trump’s proposed tax code changes. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that his plan will likely have a positive impact on my family and my business. It also appears that his proposed changes will be GREAT for most Americans.
Essentially, Trump plans to reduce the number of brackets from seven to three and lower the effective tax rates for everyone. Lower taxes and a simpler tax code are two things I can get behind. Here’s what the individual tax brackets might look like if Trump’s plan gets approved.
Trump Brackets & Rates
- Tier One: 12%
- Married & Filing Jointly: Ordinary Income from $0 to $75k
- Single Filing: Ordinary Income from $0 to $37.5k
- Tier Two: 25%
- Married & Filing Jointly: Ordinary Income from $75k to $225k
- Single Filing: Ordinary Income from $37.5k to $112.5k
- Tier Three: 33%
- Married & Filing Jointly: Ordinary Income $225k+
- Single Filing: Ordinary Income from $112.5k+
Trump’s plan also specifies that “Low-income Americans will have an effective income tax rate of 0,” though he does not provide specific numbers. We’ll just have to trust TOTUS on this one.
According to the Internet, the typical American can expect to save ~$1,000 per year on their taxes under Trump’s plan. This means most people will be afforded the opportunity to pump an extra G back into the economy via reckless spending on unnecessary consumer goods instead of trusting the US government to spend this money for them. As a businessman who operates a company that sells non-essential consumer goods, I’m all for it. $1,000 will go a long way at ManOutfitters.com (#spon).
Additionally, Trump’s plan will lower the corporate tax rates to a flat 15% on all profits retained by a corporation and held in the USA. Presently, American corporations pay 15% on all profits up to $75,000, then 35% on all profits above $75,000. Under the current structure, a corporation that profits $1,000,000 will owe $335,000 in cash to the government at the end of the year. Under Trump’s plan this same company will only pay $150,000 in taxes.
The caveat to the big bad corporations is that Trump plans to penalize companies that hold profits overseas in tax safe havens to avoid paying the absurdly high American corporate tax rates. In fact, the US corporate tax rates are the third highest in the world, surpassed only by the United Arab Emirates and Chad. Fuckin’ Chad. By lowering the tax rates and creating these new penalties, most American-based corporations will lose the incentive to book profits overseas. Theoretically, this would move a ton of cash back into the US and prevent future profits from going overseas.
As an economic and political novice, this makes sense to me and sounds like a good plan. However, this is a very simple overview of the potential changes and their effects. If you’re interested in digging a little deeper into some of the potential issues with Trump’s plan here’s a decent article from Forbes. If any of you readers have deeper insights, feel free to hit us with your knowledge in the comments section..
[via donaldjtrump.com]
Respond
Madison Wickham
#CoolDad / Husband | Founder / CEO of Grandex Inc
@madisonwickham
@madisonwickham
madisonwickham
Will the tax breaks allow Grandex to hire back Duda,before he ends up homeless from spending the last of his savings on Miller Lite and cigarettes!?
Come on, man.
RIP in peace, Slayla.
Rest in peace in peace?
Ever heard of barstool? Stay woke, nerd.
You should’ve seen that coming.
Which sucks, because Duda never saw it coming. 🙁
Duda is going on the bachelorette/bachelor/bachelor in paradise. He was made for that.
He would get absolutely torn apart on that show. He’d be on borderline suicide watch.
Yeah, but it’d be entertaining
Under Trump’s tax plan, i still cannot afford Man Outfitters PGP
I’m sure those tax rates will pay for his multi-trillion dollar infrastructure plan.
Didn’t you hear? Mexico is paying for that too.
How much does a metaphoric wall cost? Is that paid for in real dollars or pesos?
Everyone he deports is given a brick and a ride to the border.
You have to use Trump Dollars for those. (Trademark Pending)
The bigger question: Who will do all the labor work involved in these infrastructure projects after Trump deports all the illegal immigrants?
All the white people on food stamps that voted for him.
Going back to “whites only?”
Only people we’re allowed to talk shit about these days.
Mexicans don’t always make really good Mexican food. Boom.
Are you trying to say that Trump should deport them back to Mexico to learn? That’s racist as fuck dude. Boom.
If this tax plan and the infrastructure plan gets passed the deficit is gonna explode even larger than it already has. Couple opinion pieces today said it’s gonna make the market explode upwards in the short term but it’ll hurt the market in the long term.
Tack on that China is planning on refusing to accept US imports based on Trump’s proposed tariffs, other countries will probably follow suit. Sounds like we have a depression a brewin’.
No benefits of getting married for taxes….. never getting married now.
Don’t kid yourself, wasn’t going to happen anyway.
Boom. Roasted.
Oh boy.
I’m ok with these tax brackets as long as he uses his extensive knowledge of tax loopholes to eliminate those loopholes like the one that allowed him to not pay taxes.
As someone who takes advantage of every deduction he can when January comes around, I can confidently say that anyone who willingly chooses to pay more taxes than he has to is a moron.
Your girlfriend is a tax on your soul.
As someone who hasn’t take advantage he can when it comes to women, I can confidently say that my dick is a moron.
NOL carryover aint much of a loophole anyone can do it. All you gotta do is lose your ass in starting a small business then use that loss to offset any future ordinary income. easy peasy.
Trump may be an asshole and not exactly the finest person in the world…but damn if those rates don’t look amazing.
Voting for Gary Johnson – PGP
I’m right there with you Madison. I was feeling the Johnson as soon as Rand Paul dropped out.
Man I was all in on Johnson.
I did an extensive Wikipedia search on Chad. Only 2.3% of citizens have Internet and a per capita GDP of $880. What the he*l are they taxing?
Even with this tax plan I will still be a broke teacher
Name checks out.
I wish I had that extra $1,000 to take advantage of Man Outfitters’ Black Friday & Cyber Monday deals.
Alright alright alright. I like PGP for funny, relatable articles on the lighter side. Madoff gets in a good reflective article, and Defries churns out better horror fiction than my boy RL Stein. But come on.
Here’s the thing – I like lower taxes. You like lower taxes. But, that doesn’t mean Trump’s plan is good. Trump’s tax credits would insanely disproportionately benefit the wealthiest of Americans ($250k+, even better for millionaires and up, which at least I don’t come close to) and could cost over $7 trillion over 10 years. That’s a lot of coin. Which might be fine if I was a millionaire who is then buying a couple more houses each year, but as a guy with student loans and who’s just trying to be able to afford a couple beers after work, maybe that doesn’t sound so great. Because eventually we’re going to have to cut down on that debt, and I don’t want that falling on my head. So, maybe not so good for all Americans? Depends, I guess.
Also, yes America has higher corporate tax rates than a lot of other countries. People like to throw around the 35% figure. But if you look into the effective tax rate (what corporations actually pay) it gets significantly lower and more in line with other countries. That’s not to say that inversions aren’t shitty (they are) or that we shouldn’t change around tax structures (we should). But the rate isn’t as bad as what you’re saying.
Summary: I disagree on some points, and anyway, I should have run instead of Hillary.
Don’t bring your long winded opinions to PGP. Keep that on FB with everyone else.
It benefits the rich more because they are already being burdened at a higher rate than the poor. Saying the government should be allowed to take a greater percentage from your neighbor than they take from you is an asshole statement, no matter who you are. You are effectively saying that the amount of time you spend grinding it out to make something of yourself is more important than the time he does.
I mean, given the relative utility of money (that is, that after the major expenses of housing, food, healthcare/debt are covered, the usefulness of a dollar decreases), progressive taxation makes sense. It’s for this reason too that flat taxes end up being regressive, because the poor simply don’t have as much skin to put into the game as the wealthy.
You can argue about what the rates should be, but I’m having a hard time agreeing with you that the system itself is bad.
And they still pay more if there is a flat tax involved. 15% of $40,000 is a lot less than 15% of $125,000. Yet we have decided as a country that because they can afford it, it’s ok to say that more time out of their day must be spent working for free for the government, while the rest get to spend more time working for themselves.
And yet, I can do a whole lot more with $106,250 than I can with $34,000. Again, there is a relative utility involved with money. Hence, the need for progressive taxation. And frankly, I’m sure that if you offered any poor person the chance to “spend more time out of their day working for free for the government” in exchange for a significant pay boost, every single one of them would take it.
Right now, I feel like your main argument is a philosophical one, while mine is a practical one. I don’t know how to reconcile that.
It’s not practical to take a higher percentage of income from the people who actually invest into this country and provide jobs for the others. And the real question should be why does the government need to tax the rich more in the first place? If they can’t run the country from a flat rate from people, I’m of the opinion that we have too much government in the first place.
As to the philosophical argument, I fully believe government should treat each person equally. Once you start making decisions that affect a group of citizens differently than another is what sets in motion the impetus for corruption to take place. For example couldn’t I make the argument that if the government is going to take more from me, then I should receive more preferential treatment from the government? The attitude is just as wrong, yet it still happens.
I think we’ll have to disagree that it’s “rich people” that provide jobs for others. Jobs are created by demand. It’s easier to create a supply to match demand when you have capital, but taking your logic to its conclusion would mean that a wealthy person could single-handedly bring back the telegram industry.
There’s also a difference between “fairness” and “equality.” Right now, you’re arguing for fairness. In other words, we shouldn’t give someone a few more rungs on their ladder to get over the wall because that would mean that we would need to give them to the ones who already have way more than enough to get over said figurative wall.
I’d argue that equality means making sure that everyone has at least the basics to succeed so we’re leaving it up to the individual to take it and run with it, but that’s kinda straying away from the original conversation of progressive taxation, now isn’t it?
Except in the case of tax brackets, the government is still giving everyone the basics to succeed, just taking more from people who have more.
I think the root of our disagreement is that from what I can gather, you see taxes as money that is owed to the government, and they cut the less fortunate a break, while I see taxes as money taken by the government, which punish the more fortunate. Because of this, I doubt either of us will be able sway one each other without getting into a much broader debate about what government’s role should be in the life of the average American. I enjoyed it though, so thanks for providing a better discussion than my drunk uncle at Thanksgiving.
Thanks, I enjoyed talking with you about it too. Because I don’t think anyone’s getting out of this year’s Thanksgiving alive.
I agree with his lowering the tax on offshore money being brought back but with the caveat that it cant be used for the stock buybacks and require a certain % to be allocated to capital projects. Cause lets face it anyone who knows finance can agree stock buybacks are bullshit.