Trump’s tax proposals: Tax reform or soak the middle class?

Edward Kleinbard is the former chief of staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation of the United States Congress.  In this role, he was a tax technocrat who came to understand the intricacies of the tax code.

But as a congressional staffer he saw first-hand the politics behind our tax code.

He joins the Think Tank this week, and we discuss:

• President Donald Trump has claimed the U.S. is the highest tax country in the world? Are we?
• What would the Trump proposals mean for people at varying income levels? For businesses?
• What is the difference between tax rates and tax levels?  How do various deductions and credits distort the impact of tax rates in actual practice?
• What are these tax loopholes everyone talks about? How do some of these actually work?

We’re not going to change anyone’s mind on the subject of taxes this week (we’d all like to pay less, right?) but we can give you a greater understanding of how the system actually works.