Taxes & The Ryan Budget

By: Meredith Kelly

5524891107_e6420408a7_m

Speaker Ryan likes to summarize his position on taxes as “simplify, simplify, simplify.” Sounds nice, but in reality, “simplify” is Ryan’s shorthand for something much more sinister. Ryan’s budget would give tax cuts to the ultra-wealthy and corporations, while raising taxes for the middle class.

CBPP: Millionaires Would Likely Experience A $245,000 Net Tax Cut Under the Ryan Budget. “If policymakers enacted the same extremely ambitious reductions in tax expenditures for filers with incomes above $200,000 that TPC assumed when it analyzed Romney’s tax plan, filers with incomes of $1 million or more would lose tax breaks totaling about $90,000 on average — still leaving them with an average net tax cut of about $245,000. Households with incomes above $200,000 would get a net cut of about $16,000.” [Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 3/17/13]

Middle Class Families Would Pay On Average $3,000 More in Taxes, Under Ryan Budget. “[Tax Policy Center] also found that to fully finance the tax cuts for people with incomes over $200,000, filers with children and incomes under $200,000 would see their taxes go up by more than $3,000 on average, even with the ambitious reductions in tax expenditures for high-income households that TPC examined.” [Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 3/17/13]

Ryan Budget Would Slash The Corporate Tax Rate From 35 Percent to 25 Percent. “Under the Ryan plan, the corporate tax rate would also fall, from 35 percent to 25 percent — although all those tax changes are supposed to be crafted to bring in the same amount of revenue as the current tax code, a tall order.” [New York Times, 3/12/13]

Ryan Budget Would Encourage Companies to Ship Jobs Overseas.  The National Review reported that the FY 2015 Republican Budget would reform the tax system by “reducing the U.S. corporate tax-rate from 35 percent to 25 percent and shifting from a worldwide tax system to a territorial system.”  The Tax Policy Center previously reported that a territorial tax system “might encourage some domestic companies to move more of their operations- and shift both jobs and more reported income- to low tax countries.” Citizens for Tax Justice reported: “The tax incentives for job offshoring and profit shifting would increase if Congress adopted a ‘territorial tax system.’” [National Review, 4/02/14; Tax Policy Center, 2/28/12; Citizens for Tax Justice, 10/19/11]