ATR president Grover Norquist recently joined Josiah Neeley and Doug McCullough on The Urbane Cowboys Podcast to discuss Joe Biden’s tax plan and what changes in tax policy we could look forward to under a second term of President Trump.
When asked about Biden’s tax plan, Norquist said:
“He has said repeatedly that, on day one, he will repeal the entire Trump, Republican tax cut… That means that the corporate rate, that was 35% under Biden and Obama–the highest in the world, Communist China being at 25%– would be repealed. People were exporting capital from the United States. People in other countries were investing in other countries because we had higher business taxes than Communist China and Germany. All of these countries that we think of as not terribly attractive to investment were more attractive on their tax policy than the United States was. He wants to take the 21% rate that the Republicans passed and move it back to 35%. Sometimes his staff says 28%, but he is on record 10 times saying “repeal the whole thing…” The median income, family of four, would get a $2,000 tax increase, simply by repealing the Republican tax. So if you want to pay $2,000 more in taxes, vote for Biden. If you’re a single parent, median income… it’s a $1,300 tax increase.”
“On the individual level, the Republicans doubled the per-child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000. Biden says he’ll get rid of that… You add to that, he wants to go back to Obamacare and bring back some of the tax increases in Obamacare that Republicans, over the years, have gotten rid of. The most obvious, painful, destructive one is the five million American households that, every year that Obama was president, paid a tax of $695 per person in the household if they refused to buy Obamacare. The $695 did not get you Obamacare: this is not, “pay a tax and get some benefit.” This is the penalty, the tax penalty, for refusing the wonderful opportunity of Obamacare which you don’t want, which you couldn’t afford. Obamacare is pretty expensive… Three-quarters of the people who were hit with that tax each year earned less than $50,000 a year.“
“He wants to double the capital gains tax… Now we’re getting out of the zone of just taking away the tax cuts that the Republicans put forward… On top of that is the energy tax/the gasoline tax/the carbon tax, he also wants to double the capital gains rate to 40%. If you remember the earlier lie that no one who earned less than $400,000 a year would ever see their taxes raised, he’s very specific when he gleefully says, “Everybody will pay a 40% capital gains tax.” Which, by the way, would be twice what Communist China has. When people say, “Oh, Biden. He’s a moderate, right? Because he’s not as crazy as Bernie.” Well, he’s to the left of Communist China…” When he says it, he says, “Every single American will pay a 40% capital gains tax.””
When asked about what the Trump administration could do in a second term, Norquist explained:
“Well, we can go with things that the President and his allies talk about. Regarding a number of tax cuts in the last 10 years, on the individual level–their goal is to make them all permanent… The goal is to make sure the doubling of the per-child tax credit is permanent, not just for ten years, and the lower individual rates are made permanent. Because businesses have to plan many decades in the future, all of the corporate changes were made permanent, with offsetting revenue, but the individual rates were not made permanent. The Republican goal is to make that permanent, or at least kick it out another ten years… The President has also talked about indexing capital gains for inflation, so that if you buy a stock, and then 50 years later you sell it when you retire, you don’t pay capital gains on the inflation that accumulated over 50 years… On average, 40% of the gain when you buy and sell stocks is inflation. So basically, it is a huge capital gains tax cut, but it just makes it clear: if you hold onto something for a long time, you shouldn’t be taxed on the inflation gain, only the real gain. The President has talked about doing this through executive order, which he has the power to do.”