click
Of course the problem with "whatever is true" is figuring out what's true, particularly when it conflicts with "whatever you'd like to be true" or "whatever feels true."
Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, would like voters to believe that he can cut everyone's marginal tax rates by 20 percent without increasing the deficit or further reducing the taxes paid by the wealthiest 1 percent of households, thus making it look like a giveaway to people like him.
He professes to believe this is true, but it's the only part of his "bold, conservative" plan for tax reform that he has released. Without further details — like which programs he'd cut or what loopholes he'd eliminate — it's impossible to test conclusively the truth of Mr. Romney's claims.
Nevertheless, the Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution last week gave it a try in a paper with the mind-numbing title of "On the Distributional Effects of Base-broadening Income Tax Reform."
The TPC gave Mr. Romney's plan the benefit of every doubt, with generous assumptions about economic conditions, tax progressivity, bias on behalf of programs that incentivize savings and investment and the growth that the program would inspire.
No comments:
Post a Comment