Atlasian Budget Congressional Committee

[Potus]

Is your Medicare line item all federal spending routed through Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services?

The tax code is too simple in the baseline you've introduced. Where is the rest of it? Way more than the EITC.

[Potus]

Is your Medicare line item all federal spending routed through Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services?

The tax code is too simple in the baseline you've introduced. Where is the rest of it? Way more than the EITC.

The real tax code is 20,000 pages...

We aren't modeling the real world even remotely if we don't acknowledge the extensive tax expenditure in our current budget. Tax expenditure is a big impetus for tax reform in the real world. It's also incredibly closely linked to conversations about trade, healthcare, education access, energy, etc. It's a hugely important aspect of fiscal policy.

[Potus]

Tax expenditure is 1/3 of all fiscal policy. It's not like I'm asking you to create a register of accounts for every office. Listing values for the mortgage interest deduction isn't hard.

The cost of tax expenditure besides the EITC is much more dependent on the rate structure adopted rather than the spending approved. The EITC is unique in that it should probably be considered a spending program, but that's beside the point. We have to build the rates and then determine what portion of the revenue would be diminished by existing tax expenditure.

[Potus]

Let me also say that I support at least a $10,000 standard deduction. Really, $15,000 would be better so all full time minimum wage work would be tax exempt. The proposal should be revenue neutral when adjusting for the standard deduction component.

If the proposal still doesn't shake out toward neutrality after a hefty standard deduction, rate cuts should go toward the 15% and 20% brackets.

[Potus]

Let me also say that I support at least a $10,000 standard deduction. Really, $15,000 would be better so all full time minimum wage work would be tax exempt. The proposal should be revenue neutral when adjusting for the standard deduction component.

If the proposal still doesn't shake out toward neutrality after a hefty standard deduction, rate cuts should go toward the 15% and 20% brackets.

Also, I encouraged an investment income deduction before. I think $50,000 was probably much too small. There are a couple ways of to expand that and provide a more equitable treatment of investment. One is to just raise it from $50k. Probably at least in the upper hundreds of thousands.

Beyond that, the House GOP tax proposal from Better Way includes an exclusion for investment income of 50% while taxing capital gains at regular income tax rates. I like this approach.