SUMMARYAND INTRODUCTION
Presidential candidate Donald Trump has proposed tax reforms that would significantly reduce marginal tax rates for both individuals and businesses,increase standard deduction amounts to nearly four times current levels, limit or repeal some tax expenditures,repeal the individual and corporate alternative minimum taxes and the estate and gift taxes,and tax the profits of foreign subsidiaries of US companies in the year they are earned. The Tax Policy Center estimates the proposal would reduce federal revenue by $9.5 trillion over its first decade and an additional $15.0 trillion over the subsequent 10 years,before accounting for added interest costs or considering macroeconomic feedback effects. Most of the revenue loss would come from individual income tax cuts, but about a third would be from the reduction in the corporate income tax rate and the introduction of special rates on pass-through businesses.The proposal would cut taxes at every income level, but high-income taxpayers would receive the biggest cuts, both in dollar terms andas a percentage of income. Overall, the plan would cut taxes by an average of about $5,100, or about 7 percent of after-tax income.However, the highest-income 0.1 percent of taxpayers (those with incomes over $3.7million in 2015 dollars) would experience an average tax cut of more than $1.3 million in 2017, nearly 19 percent of after-tax income. Middle-income households would receive an average tax cut of $2,700, or 4.9 percent of after-tax income. The significant marginal tax rate cuts would boost incentives to work, save, and invest if interest rates do not change. The plan would also reduce some tax distortions in the allocation of capital. However,increased government borrowing would push up interest rates and crowd out private investment, offsetting some or all of the plan’s positive incentive effects. Offsetting a deficit this large would require unprecedented cuts in federal spending.The main elements of the Trump proposal, as we modeled them, are listed below. Appendix A discusses instances in which campaign documents and the candidates’ statements were unclear and presents the assumptions that we made in our modeling. Note that all of our estimates reflect the effects of the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act of 2015 and the tax provisions in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2016 on current law baseline revenues as well as on the Trump plan.
