The White House is considering introducing a new round of tax cuts that would likely focus primarily on reducing payroll taxes.
The “Tax Cut 2.0” plan is meant to highlight tax policy differences between President Trump and his eventual Democratic opponent, analysts told Fox News.
Thus far, all Democrats running for their party’s 2020 nomination have proposed various tax increases to fund new government entitlement programs including healthcare.
Those plans range from boosting corporate tax rates to nearly where they were before Republicans and the president passed a tax cut package in December 2017 to raising taxes on middle-class and wealthy wage earners.
As to the possibility that the president would introduce a new tax cut package ahead of the 2020 election, Fox Business correspondent David Asman said, “I think it’s a great idea.”
He noted that while government income tax revenues fell initially following the first tax cut, they have since risen. Tax revenues for 2018, Asman said, reached record levels, including corporate tax revenues, even though corporate rates got the biggest cut under the 2017 GOP plan.
Now, he says, the White House is likely to focus more on cutting payroll taxes because that would affect most Americans, even those who don’t pay income taxes.
“Not one Democrat running for president is in favor of cutting taxes. They’re all for raising taxes,” Asman said.
He added that the lowering of corporate taxes induced American corporations to relocate to the United States from overseas where corporate tax rates were lower.
He also said the return of American corporations has led to the creation of “millions” of new jobs and “the best economy we’ve ever had.”
Democrats counter that the Trump/GOP tax cuts primarily benefited wealthy Americans and corporations, not average workers.
However, to the Tax Policy Center, about 65 percent of households paid less in federal income tax in 2018 under the TCJA than they would have paid under the old tax laws, while about 6 percent paid more.
Among those who got a tax cut, it averaged about $2,200. The business-backed Tax Foundation estimates 80 percent of those filing federal income taxes saw some sort of a cut in 2018 as a result of the TCJA, while about 8 percent saw a tax increase.