September 25, 2017

Quote of the Day: Taxes Are Going Way, Way Down!

Yin Bogu/Xinhua via ZUMA

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From President Trump, explaining his goal for tax reform:

We’re going to bring the individual rate to 10 percent or 12 percent, much lower than it is right now.

Boo yah! This would be quite a cut from the current top rate of 39.6 percent. Even Grover Norquist doesn’t dream of tax rates like this. That means it’s time for another round of “WTF was he talking about?” Let’s review our options:

  1. It was just a slip of the tongue. But this is unlikely since Trump specifically said “10 or 12.” He really meant it.
  2. He’s talking about personal income tax as a percentage of GDP, and he wants to increase it to 10 or 12 percent. But no: he said it would be “much lower” than it is right now.
  3. He was talking about the log of the root mean square of the average tax paid by people in the top bracket.
  4. He has no clue what he’s talking about.

Hmmm. I think I’m going with Option 4. The Post phrased this diplomatically: “It wasn’t clear exactly what he was referring to and the White House didn’t immediately clarify his intention.”

No worries, though, I’m sure the White House will explain things soon. There’s probably already some poor schmoe staying up all night looking for something—anything—that the Republican plan will plausibly reduce to 10 or 12 percent.

Here’s a hint: adjusted gross income. Currently, individual income taxes are about 14 percent of reported AGI. A tax plan that reduced this rate to “10 or 12” percent would represent a tax cut of 15-30 percent. That’s the ticket, I think.

Alternatively, the White House could just invent some new numbers of their own. Or declare that the press is playing “gotcha games.” Or insist that the president can say whatever he wants, and Beltway elites will never stop him from talking directly to the common man. Or claim ignorance until reporters get tired of asking. All of these have worked well for them in the past.

POSTSCRIPT: The Post also reports that Republicans are “looking for a way to keep their plan from being a massive windfall for the wealthiest Americans.” Hahahaha. Sure they are. DC journalists crack me up sometimes.

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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