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      Trump Dangles New Tax Cut Proposals With Real Political Appeal

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      The most recent and costliest of Mr. Trump’s ideas would end income taxes on Social Security benefits.First it was a tax cut for hotel and restaurant workers in Nevada, a swing state where Donald J. Trump proposed exempting tips from taxes. Then, in front of powerful chief executives gathered in Washington, Mr. Trump floated cutting the corporate tax rate, helping to ease concerns in the business community about his candidacy.Now Mr. Trump is calling for an end to taxing Social Security benefits, which could be a boon for retirees, one of the most politically important groups in the United States.Repeatedly during the campaign, Mr. Trump and Republicans have embraced new, sometimes novel tax cuts in an attempt to shore up support with major constituencies. In a series of social-media posts, at political rallies, and without formal policy proposals, Mr. Trump has casually suggested reducing federal revenue by trillions of dollars.While policy experts have taken issue with the ideas, Mr. Trump’s pronouncements have real political appeal, at times putting Democrats on their back foot. Nevada’s two Democratic senators and its powerful culinary union have endorsed ending taxes on tips, while the AARP supports tax relief for seniors receiving Social Security benefits.“You do have to scratch your head a little bit when someone’s going around offering free lunches everywhere,” said Jesse Lee, a Democratic consultant and former Biden White House official. “We’re all for people having their lunch, but we have to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for it.”The most recent and most expensive of Mr. Trump’s plans is ending income taxes on Social Security benefits, which could cost the federal government as much as $1.8 trillion in revenue over a decade, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. That would burn through the program’s financial reserves more quickly and hasten the moment when the government is no longer able to pay out Social Security benefits in full under current law.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Washington Prepares for the ‘Super Bowl of Tax’

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      Even with control of the White House and Congress up in the air, lawmakers and lobbyists are gearing up for a big debate next year over expiring measures in former President Donald Trump’s tax law.President Biden’s decision not to seek re-election is upending expectations about who will control Washington next year. But there is one thing lawmakers and lobbyists are certain of: A tax fight is coming.Across the nation’s capital, preparations are quietly starting for what some are calling the “Super Bowl of tax.” On Capitol Hill, Republicans and Democrats are holding strategy and education sessions. Lobbyists are pressing their case to lawmakers and preparing multimillion-dollar publicity campaigns to defend tax breaks for corporations. Think tanks are churning out research assailing or lauding elements of the byzantine tax code.On the line is the future of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which a Republican Congress passed and former President Donald J. Trump signed into law in 2017.To avoid blowing too large of a hole in the federal budget at the time, Republicans scheduled many of the tax cuts to expire after 2025. That deadline has created a rare opportunity to reshape federal tax policy next year, and lawmakers in each party intend to be ready to wield whatever power voters give them in November.“We’re studying and preparing,” said Senator Michael D. Crapo of Idaho, who as the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee has been holding meetings and gathering ideas about next year. “It’s preseason.”Many of the expiring tax measures are ones that benefit middle-class Americans, including a larger standard deduction, lower marginal income tax rates and a more generous child tax credit. Republicans chose to let those tax cuts expire — while making other measures like a lower 21 percent corporate rate permanent — in a bet that Democrats would eventually vote to protect them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Supreme Court Upholds Trump-Era Tax Provision

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      The tax dispute, which was closely watched by experts, involved a one-time foreign income tax, but many saw it as a broader challenge to pre-emptively block Congress from passing a wealth tax.The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a tax on foreign income that helped finance the tax cuts President Donald J. Trump imposed in 2017 in a case that many experts had cautioned could undercut the nation’s tax system.The vote was 7 to 2, with Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh writing the majority opinion. He was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and the court’s three liberals. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote a concurring opinion, joined by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., and Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, joined by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch.The question before the justices appeared narrow at first glance: Is the tax in question allowed under the Constitution, which gives Congress limited powers of taxation?In the majority opinion, Justice Kavanaugh wrote that the tax fell within the authority of Congress under the Constitution.Many tax experts had warned that striking down the tax could have wide repercussions. Such a move could have threatened to fundamentally change how income is defined, block efforts to tax billionaires’ wealth and undermine enforcement for all sorts of other taxes, which amount to billions in revenue for the government.Among the defenders of the law was Paul Ryan, the Republican and former House speaker who helped write the legislation. Upending the tax, Mr. Ryan said, could endanger up to a third of the U.S. tax code. He joined the Biden administration and some other conservatives in seeking to keep the law intact.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why Some Billionaires Will Back Trump

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      Donald Trump’s campaign is reportedly strapped for cash. Small-dollar donations are running far behind their 2020 pace. Big Trump rallies aren’t yielding his biggest cash hauls. Some large-dollar donors are hesitant, in part because they worry (with good reason) that their money will be used not for the campaign but to pay his legal bills. So he has been wooing right-wing billionaires.I have no idea how successful he’ll be, but it seems highly likely that at least some billionaires will provide substantial sums to a man who tried to overturn the last election and has been open about his authoritarian intentions — using the Justice Department to go after his political opponents, rounding up millions of undocumented immigrants and putting them into detention camps and more.Which raises the question: Why would billionaires support such a person?After all, it’s not as if they’ve been suffering under President Biden. Economists, myself included, often remind people that the stock market is not the economy. Low unemployment and rising real wages — both of which, by the way, the Biden economy has delivered, even if many people don’t believe it — have much more relevance to most people’s lives.But stock prices are probably a much better indicator of how the very wealthy, who hold a lot of financial assets, are doing. And although in 2020 Trump predicted a stock crash if Biden won, the market has, in fact, been hitting record highs under the current administration.Why, then, back a candidate who more or less promises to unleash social and political chaos?One straightforward answer is that the wealthy will almost certainly pay lower taxes — and corporations will be less regulated — if Trump wins than if Biden stays in office.If you believe, like some leftists, that Republicans and Democrats are basically the same — that both serve the interests of corporations and the elite — you’re wrong. The modern Democratic Party isn’t, despite what prominent Republicans say, Marxist or socialist. It does, however, have a track record of raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for social programs. Notably, the Affordable Care Act used new taxes on high-income individuals to pay for health care subsidies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.K. to Cut Taxes Again as Election Nears

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      The Conservative government, trailing badly in the polls, proposed the second tax cut in four months.Amid lackluster prospects for economic growth, the British government announced it would cut taxes for workers ahead of a general election this year.Jeremy Hunt, Britain’s top financial official, told lawmakers on Wednesday that he would cut National Insurance, a payroll tax paid by workers and employers that funds state pensions and some benefits, by two percentage points. It would take the rate for about 27 million employees down to 8 percent, and follows a two percentage point cut announced less than four months ago. Together, the cuts would save the average employee about 900 pounds ($1,145) a year, Mr. Hunt said. The rate was also cut for self-employed workers.“We can now help families not just with temporary cost-of-living support but with permanent cuts in taxation,” Mr. Hunt, the chancellor of the Exchequer, said in Parliament. “We do this to give much needed help in challenging times. But also because Conservatives know lower tax means higher growth.”Mr. Hunt also announced a sweep of smaller measures, including freezing taxes on alcohol and fuel, proposals to increase productivity in the public sector, and abolishing the tax advantages for foreign earnings of British residents living abroad.The chancellor has been under political pressure from the governing Conservative Party to lower taxes ahead of the general election, which is expected to take place this year, though a date has not been set yet. The party is substantially lagging the opposition Labour Party in the polls.But Mr. Hunt’s ability to offer sweeteners to voters has been constrained by the fact that the British economy is growing slowly — if at all. Stretched public services need money and there are calls to invest more in infrastructure. The chancellor also has to meet his self-imposed budget rules, which gave him even less fiscal room to maneuver.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Nikki Haley Is Coming for Your Retirement

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      It feels like years ago, but actually only a few months have passed since many big Republican donors seemed to believe that Ron DeSantis could effectively challenge Donald Trump for the Republican nomination. It has been an edifying spectacle — an object lesson in the reality that great wealth need not be associated with good judgment, about politics or anything else.At this point, both conventional wisdom and prediction markets say that Trump has a virtual lock on the nomination. But Wall Street isn’t completely resigned to Trump’s inevitability; there has been a late surge in big-money support for Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina. And there is, to be fair, still a chance that Trump — who is facing many criminal charges and whose public rants have become utterly unhinged — will manage to crash and burn before securing the nomination.So it seems worth looking at what Haley stands for.From a political point of view, one answer might be: nothing. A recent Times profile described her as having “an ability to calibrate her message to the moment.” A less euphemistic way to put this is that she seems willing to say whatever might work to her political advantage. “Flip-flopping” doesn’t really convey the sheer cynicism with which she has shifted her rhetoric and changed her positions on everything from abortion rights to immigration to whether it’s OK to try overturning a national election.And anyone hoping that she would govern as a moderate if she should somehow make it to the White House is surely delusional. Haley has never really shown a willingness to stand up to Republican extremists — and at this point the whole G.O.P. has been taken over by extremists.That said, Haley has shown some consistency on issues of economic and fiscal policy. And what you should know is that her positions on these issues are pretty far to the right. In particular, she seems exceptionally explicit, even among would-be Republican nominees, in calling for an increase in the age at which Americans become eligible for Social Security — a bad idea that seems to be experiencing a revival.So let’s talk about Social Security.The first thing you should know about Social Security is that the actual numbers don’t justify the apocalyptic rhetoric one often hears, not just from the right but from self-proclaimed centrists who want to sound serious. No, the exhaustion of the system’s trust fund, currently projected to occur in roughly a decade, wouldn’t mean that benefits disappear.It would mean that the system would need additional revenue to continue paying scheduled benefits in full. But the extra revenue required would be smaller than you probably think. The most recent long-term projections from the Congressional Budget Office show Social Security outlays rising to 6.2 percent of gross domestic product in 2053 from 5.1 percent this year, not exactly an earth-shattering increase.It’s true that the budget office projects a much bigger rise in spending on Medicare and other major health programs. But much of this projected rise reflects the assumption that medical costs will rise much faster than economic growth, which has been true in the past but need not be true in the future. Indeed, since 2010, Medicare spending has been far less than expected. And there is every reason to believe that smart policies could further curb health care costs, given how much more America spends than other wealthy nations.Still, Social Security does face a funding gap. How should it be closed?Anyone who says, as Haley does, that the retirement age should rise in line with increasing life expectancy is being oblivious, perhaps willfully, to the grim inequality of modern America. Until Covid struck, average life expectancy at 65, the relevant number, was indeed rising. But these gains were concentrated among Americans with relatively high incomes. Less affluent Americans — those who depend most on Social Security — have seen little rise in life expectancy, and in some cases actual declines.So anyone invoking rising life expectancy as a reason to delay Social Security benefits is, in effect, saying that aging janitors must keep working (or be cast into extreme poverty) because bankers are living longer.How, then, should the Social Security gap be closed? The obvious answer — which happens to be favored by a majority of voters — is to raise more revenue. Remember, America collects less revenue as a percentage of G.D.P. than almost any other advanced economy.But Haley, of course, wants to cut income taxes.My guess is that none of this will be relevant, that Trump will be the nominee. But if he stumbles, I would beg political reporters not to focus on Haley’s personal affect, which can seem moderate, but rather on her policies. On social issues and the fate of democracy, she appears to be a pure weather vane, turning with the political winds. On fiscal and economic policy, she’s a hard-right advocate of tax cuts for the rich and benefit cuts for the working class. If calling someone a “populist” has any meaning these days, she’s the exact opposite.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      I.R.S. Puts Lien on Giuliani’s Palm Beach Condo for $550,000 Tax Debt

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      The action by federal tax officials is the latest sign of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s growing financial troubles.The I.R.S. has placed a lien on a Florida property owned by Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and lawyer for Donald J. Trump, because he owes roughly $550,000 in income taxes, according to a court filing.The property, a lakeside condominium in Palm Beach, sits less than three miles from Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence. Mr. Giuliani and his ex-wife had tried to sell it for $3.3 million in 2019, but never found a buyer, according to The Palm Beach Daily News.The existence of the court filing in Palm Beach County was first reported by The Daily Mail.The action by federal officials over Mr. Giuliani’s 2021 income taxes is the latest sign of his growing financial troubles. He is entangled in numerous legal battles and has been racking up bills for his defense in criminal investigations, private lawsuits and legal disciplinary proceedings stemming from his bid to keep Mr. Trump in office after the 2020 election.He faces a racketeering charge, among others, in Georgia for his role in that effort, as well as a defamation case brought by two election workers in the state. In July, Mr. Giuliani put his Upper East Side apartment in New York City up for sale for $6.5 million. His lawyer, Adam Katz, said at the time that his client was “close to broke.” At one point in August, Mr. Giuliani was said to owe nearly $3 million in legal expenses. Robert J. Costello, once a protégé of Mr. Giuliani, is suing him for unpaid legal fees. And last week Hunter Biden sued Mr. Giuliani for his role in spreading personal information about Mr. Biden.Mr. Giuliani has repeatedly asked Mr. Trump to pay him millions of dollars he believes he is owed for his role in the effort to keep Mr. Trump in office. After entreaties from people close to Mr. Giuliani for a financial lifeline, Mr. Trump hosted a $100,000-per-person fund-raiser at his club in Bedminster, N.J., last month to aid the former mayor.Kirsten Noyes More

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      Income Taxes for All? Rick Scott Has a Plan, and That’s a Problem.

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      The “Plan to Rescue America” is dividing the party and cheering Democrats, and its author, Senate Republicans’ top campaign official, won’t stop talking about it.WASHINGTON — Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the somewhat embattled head of the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, said one utterly indisputable thing on Thursday when he stood before a packed auditorium of supporters at the conservative Heritage Foundation: His plan for a G.O.P. majority would make everyone angry at him, Republicans included.It was an odd admission for the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. His leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has repeatedly told Mr. Scott to pipe down about his “11-Point Plan to Rescue America,” with its call to impose income taxes on more than half of Americans who pay none now, and to sunset all legislation after five years, presumably including Social Security and Medicare.It has divided his party, put Mr. Scott’s own candidates in awkward positions, and is already featured prominently in Democratic advertising. But after Thursday, it is clear the Republicans have not figured out how to address their Rick Scott problem.“Washington’s full of a bunch of do-nothing people who believe that no conservative idea can ever happen, nothing will change for the better as long as they’re in charge, and that’s why we’re going to get rid of them,” the senator said, ambiguous about who exactly “they” were. “So Republicans are going to complain about the plan. They’ll do it with anonymous quotes, some not so anonymous. They’ll argue that Democrats will use it against us in the election. I hope they do.”The senator insisted on the Heritage Foundation stage that his plan would raise taxes on no one, only to concede to reporters after the talk that it would — or that it wouldn’t, he couldn’t decide.“The people that are paying taxes right now — I’m not going to raise their rates; I’ve never done it,” he said, before adding: “I’m focused on the people that can go to work, and decided to be on a government program and not participate in this. I believe whether it’s just a dollar, we all are in this together.”But most adults who pay no income tax do work, and the plan makes no distinctions. “All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount. Currently over half of Americans pay no income tax,” it states.Last year, 57 percent of U.S. households paid no income tax, but that was by design. Successive Republican tax cuts, including President Donald J. Trump’s tax cut of 2017, which greatly expanded the standard deduction, took tens of millions of workers off the income tax rolls, though virtually all of them pay Social Security, Medicare and sales taxes.And for all of Mr. Scott’s evasions, the criticism is not coming just from the “militant left” that he denounced. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimated that ensuring all households pay at least $100 in income taxes would leave families making about $54,000 or less with more than 80 percent of the tax increase. Those making less than about $100,000 would shoulder 97 percent of the cost.His leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, right, has repeatedly told Mr. Scott to pipe down about his plan.Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times“Let me tell you what would not be a part of our agenda,” Mr. McConnell told reporters in early March. “We will not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half the American people, and sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years.”For Democrats, Mr. Scott is a gift. The 2022 campaign is shaping up as a conventional midterm, focused on the economy under Democratic control. That means inflation, gas prices and candidate ties to an unpopular president.“If you’re in power and you’re presiding over inflation, sorry, it’s tough to be you,” Representative Patrick McHenry, Republican of North Carolina, told The Ripon Society, a conservative research group, this week.Mr. Scott’s plan has allowed Democrats to talk about the alternative: what Republicans would do with power. Mr. Scott’s plan is chock-full of language about making children say the Pledge of Allegiance, prohibiting the government from asking citizens their race, ethnicity or skin color, and declaring that “men are men, women are women and unborn babies are babies.”But its economic section has been the focus. Beyond taxing everyone, under the plan, all federal laws would sunset in five years. “If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again,” the plan says. Taken literally, that would leave the fate of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security to the whims of a Congress that rarely passes anything so expansive.Democrats are gleefully calling attention to it, even going so far as to promote the Republican senator’s speaking engagement on Thursday.“The chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee has put it on record in a document,” said David Bergstein, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, “and we are taking his word for it.”Mr. Scott’s ideas threaten to bring Republicans back to an economic argument they waged — and lost — before Mr. Trump won over wide swaths of white working-class voters with his pledges to leave entitlements alone and cut their taxes.In 2012, the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, committed a disastrous gaffe when he was caught on tape describing 47 percent of Americans as wealth takers, not wealth makers. In 2001, Jim DeMint, a House member from South Carolina at the time, who like Mr. Romney went on to the Senate, asserted that if more than half of Americans paid no taxes, they would vote to expand government largess for themselves and make others pay for it.“How can a free nation survive when a majority of its citizens, now dependent on government services, no longer have the incentive to restrain the growth of government?” he asked during a Heritage Foundation lecture, calling for all Americans to pay some income taxes.The vision of affluent Republicans counseling struggling workers to pay more taxes while they pay less was central to Mr. Trump’s critique of the party in the 2016 campaign.And Mr. Scott is an unlikely bearer of his revanchist message. He’s the richest man in Congress, worth around $260 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In 2002, the sprawling hospital chain he ran agreed to pay more than $880 million to settle the Justice Department’s longest-running inquiry into health care fraud, including $250 million returned to Medicare to resolve charges contested by the government.Fellow Republicans are not rushing to embrace Mr. Scott’s plan.“I think it’s good that elected officials put out what they’re for, and so I support his effort to do it,” said Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, among the most endangered Republicans up for re-election in November. “That’s what he’s for.”But for Republican candidates, the issue is getting awkward. In Arizona, Jim Lamon, a Republican seeking to challenge the Democratic incumbent, Senator Mark Kelly, first called the plan “pretty good stuff” only to have his campaign retreat from that embrace.Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said of the plan, “It’s good that people offer ideas.” His Democratic challenger, Representative Val B. Demings, nevertheless ran an ad on social media accusing him of embracing it.At a Republican Senate debate in Ohio on Monday, the current front-runner, Mike Gibbons, called the plan “a great first draft in trying to set some things we all believe in,” adding, “The people that don’t believe them probably shouldn’t be Republicans.”J.D. Vance, a candidate aligned with Mr. Trump’s working-class appeal, fired back: “Why would we increase taxes on the middle class, especially when Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook pay a lower tax rate than any middle-class American in this room or in this country? It’s ridiculous.”Even as he denied his plan would do that, Mr. Scott on Thursday was bold in the criticism of his fellow Republicans, who are relying on him to help them win elections this fall. Timidity is “the kind of old thinking that got us exactly where we are today, where we don’t control the House, the White House or the Senate,” he said, adding: “It’s time to have a plan. It’s time to execute on a plan.” More