Your new tax strategy
Sep 28, 2017, 6:19 AM
How do you pay for the president's proposed $5.8 trillion tax cut? (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
(AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
The president’s tax “framework” is now headed to Congress.
President Trump has promised the middle class will pay less, and that he will not permit a huge windfall for rich people.
It will be a huge windfall for the children of rich people because the federal estate tax is gone. So there’s your first strategy – get adopted by a hedge fund manager.
And your other tax strategy is to become a small business. The maximum rate for small business drops from almost 40 percent down to 25 percent to encourage job creation. But, according to tax expert Don DeSantis at Clifton Larson Allen, that also means people who already have jobs will suddenly decide that they’re actually a small business!
“Attorneys, doctors, investment bankers … wow, they could cut this from 39.6 percent to 25 percent. That’s a huge tax cut.”
But never mind that. What I notice is that the most obvious tax reform seems to be missing. It’s a reform that could raise billions, even if Congress does nothing. It’s simply this: Hiring more IRS auditors.
While you and I pay every penny we owe, everybody else seems to be cheating. The IRS estimates that each year $458 billion dollars in taxes go unpaid.
I suppose we could just jack up our bill for the wall. Unfortunately, I think Mexico is wise to us.
But what’s even dumber than that idea is that we’ve cut the IRS workforce by 15 percent over the last five years! And I get it, who wants more auditors? Especially now that you’re a “small business.”
Wink wink.
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