OPINION:
Like your tax cut? If a Democrat is elected as our next president, don’t expect that to last long. Top Democrats running for president have vowed to repeal the entire Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) passed in 2017, which would set back millions of middle-income Americans.
Americans for Tax Reform has recorded 28 occasions on which Democratic presidential candidates have threatened to eliminate the TCJA, which has lowered taxes for every income level in every congressional district.
It’s not just the TCJA, either. Democrats running for president have also proposed increasing the corporate tax rate, increasing the capital gains tax, imposing a carbon tax, gun tax, wealth tax, payroll tax increase, a middle-class tax increase to pay for “Medicare for All,” as well as various financial transaction taxes.
If Democrats succeeded with their promise to repeal the TCJA, for starters, a family of four earning the median income of $73,000 would see a $2,000 tax increase, and millions of households would see their standard deduction slashed in half.
A single parent with one child making a $41,000 annual income would see a tax increase of $1,300. Small businesses would suffer by a repeal of the TCJA and see a tax increase due to the 20 percent deduction for small business income being taken away.
Think that’s bad enough? This is just a small portion of the negative impacts that a repeal of the TCJA would have.
Top Democratic candidates such as former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris have endorsed a corporate tax increase, which would put the United States at the highest corporate income tax rate in the developed world, and would directly cause utility bills to go up in all 50 states.
Mr. Biden and Sen. Amy Klobuchar both support an increase in the capital gains tax, which would ultimately limit Americans’ ability to build a nest egg in addition to hurting the value of their houses, farms and businesses.
Most Democrats running for president also support Medicare for All, which its architect, Sen. Bernie Sanders, admits that the middle class is “going to pay more in taxes,” in order to pay for its $36 trillion price tag.
Just last month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren proposed a national gun tax, which would place a 30 percent federal excise tax on rifles and handguns, in addition to a 50 percent federal excise tax on ammunition. She has also proposed a wealth tax which has been described by The Washington Post editorial board as having a “certain authoritarian odor.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Cory Booker, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and former Congressman John Delaney have all proposed a carbon tax, which would require a large bureaucracy to implement.
The carbon tax has been proven to be a major burden in other countries, such as Canada, where in one school district, the tax forced 400 kids off the school bus program in order to pay for the massive $3.3 million price tag of the school district’s carbon tax costs.
While Democrats claim the TCJA didn’t help middle-income Americans, even the mainstream media has called them out on that lie.
The New York Times flatly stated in an article that “Most people got a tax cut.”
Proposing more and more taxes may prove to be effective in a Democratic primary where voters are hungry for more government control, but will ultimately fail when put before the rest of America.
• Adam Sabes is a communications fellow at Americans for Tax Reform.
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