Dear Editor
In spite of what politicians would like the public to believe, the proposed legislation that is being touted as tax reform really is just a series of tax cuts for corporations and wealthy individuals who are already getting enough of a free ride, and it comes at the expense of the national debt and the American people. Reform is defined in the Oxford English dictionary as “making changes in something in order to improve it.” How is our country being improved by tax cuts to the wealthiest individuals and to corporate America when these cuts will conservatively result in a $2 trillion increase to the $20 trillion national debt over the next ten years and $1.5 trillion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid over this same time frame? It has been presented in the Senate that 200 tax loopholes cost the country $123 trillion annually. The drafters of this tax legislation claim these loopholes will be gone under the tax plan, but the end result is not reform,as the Tax Policy Center notes it will provide 53 percent of the benefits to the top one percent, who would see an average after tax income increase of 8.5 percent. The bottom 95 percent of the population can expect after tax income increases between .5 and 1.2 percent. I’ve heard that at worst this tax proposal will add much as $5 trillion to the national debt, with 80 percent of the tax cuts going to the top one percent of earners. I don’t see anything in this bill that remotely looks like reform.
Ann Bley
Virgin Valley Action Group
Mesquite, NV
The pigs who have their snouts in the trough come from closer to home than this newspaper ever writes about. It is easy to target faceless corporations but what about large cattle raising operations where big dollars are made running herds on publicly owned land on non commercial rates. If they pay that is.. The huge subsidy that this creates is a blight on the free enterprise ethic of the US>
Not being paranoid but it seems the tax reform will benefit Trump and all his appointees well after his term has expired. “How sad”.
Gee, ya think? I suspect 99.99% of the people who support the pending Corporate give-away haven’t read any details. For example, a huge percentage of the owners of the corporations that will reap huge financial benefits are investors from other countries, not Americans. Further, a huge group of American CEOs are in agreement that their investment decisions are based on specific perceived opportunities in the marketplace, not windfalls of cash from tax reform. As in the past, that money will go to investors through increased dividends and stock buy backs – again, huge amounts going to investors in Asia (China) and Europe.
Before I would jump on the tax cut band wagon, I would like to see our Presidents tax returns to see how it would affect him. Secrecy indicates deception.