Thread by @ChuckCBPP

It’s hard to know where to begin with this one & it’s painful to have to link to it & risk spreading it around even more but here are a few points on this op-ed, including how it elides whose taxes are actually going up and ignores whose are going down:
bit.ly/3EAm5Oa

“the small business deduction would be capped”: at what level? It doesn’t say. Maybe at $10,000? No, it’s capped at $500,000. This means that the joint filers with such income up to $2.5 million still get the full deduction. I wonder why they left that out.

“Estate taxes would be raised”: Ah, yes the tax that only morons pay after three decades of a campaign by some of the wealthiest families in the country on behalf of their trust-fund kids.

How would the bill change the estate tax? It would “lower” the tax-free exemption to just over $6 million per person or $12 million per couple. “Some may be forced to liquidate to pay it.” Pinocchio alert.

Apparently, paying a capital gains tax rate of ten percentage points below the comparable rate on salaries is going to make it harder for rich business owners “to give back to communities.” It may have been a good idea to read the bill about where the money is going.

The tax $s are going towards a landmark reduction in child poverty, to help working-class kids go to college, and making it more affordable for people to go to the doctor. Helping to pay for this is something to be proud of, not whine about.

And that 3 percent surtax – how is that going to affect “small” businesses? It kicks in at gross incomes above $5 million. Surprise, the piece does not mention that.

Raising taxes on the top sliver of the richest people in the country is popular and overdue. This is why this op-ed fails to mention that 97 percent of small business owners would not be touched by the income changes on the deduction, various rates, etc.

This is because most small businesses are “small.” Because they are small, three million small business owners will receive a tax cut from the expanded Child Tax Credit. Somehow, the NFIB failed to mention that too. End (though there's lots more there).

Apologies, I meant to link to this piece to explain the “morons” reference (and forgot the quote marks). This is how a top Trump adviser described the state of the estate tax:
nyti.ms/3lOjuYe

The point is that very few people pay the estate tax – fewer than I in 1,000 estates – and it is not a concern of “small” businesses or family farmers:

It is a tax, however, that the wealthiest heirs in the country should pay but often do not because it is riddled with loopholes as Gary Cohn alludes to. This is an area the House should have done more, not less.

Moreover, keep in mind that the wealthiest people in the country do not pay tax on much of their income when they are alive and their income tax liability is erased at death – this means that lost of money goes untaxed from generation to generation.

It would be far more fair at least for the wealthiest people to pay the income tax they’ve accrued at death (see Biden proposal) and then have the wealthiest heirs pay taxes on their windfalls – just like many middle-class people do on their paychecks.