Treasury chief cites 'largest tax reform' ever

Trump wants cuts for individuals and businesses, even as the government struggles with mounting debt. We cannot, you know, support funding the wall, but you know, we can try to meet the president and Republicans on, you know, on ground that would allow us to get a bipartisan vote. It also would reduce the number of personal income tax brackets to three from seven.

But it's very fair to assume the cost of reducing the top business tax rate will be high. He later amended his plan, calling for somewhat higher rates to match what House Republicans have been calling for: 12%, 25% and 33%.

On the other hand, the proposal would also trim other deductions utilized by wealthier Americans.

U.S. Treasury chief Steven Mnuchin said Monday, "The tax reform will pay for itself with economic growth" that would boost tax revenues.

Trump is following up on his campaign promise to cut corporate tax rates to 15 percent, a lower figure than the 20 percent rate proposed by House Republicans and the 28 percent rate proposed by former President Barack Obama. Ryan has questioned whether a 15 percent rate can realistically be paid for, and he and Kevin Brady, chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, have said they're committed to revenue neutrality.

That's well below the 35% that corporations are subject to today, and the 39.6% for so-called pass-through businesses.

Others said tax reform's chances will not be greatly frustrated.

One-time tax on overseas profits: The president may again call for a low, one-time tax on the $2.6 trillion of profits that were earned overseas by USA multinational corporations and were technically never brought back to the United States.

But Senate rules now prohibit the passage of any bills that increase the deficit outside the 10-year time frame-which means that Trump's "phenomenal" tax plan would have an expiration date. For example, the USA has a "worldwide" corporate tax system.

On top of that, private equity king Stephen Schwarzman, who sits atop Blackstone Group, runs Trump's business advisory council and has emerged as a key voice in the president's ear.

Indeed, Trump did pen an executive order banning executive branch officials from lobbying the US government after they leave office.

However, this may lead to huge loss of government revenue.

"For us, the ultimate objective with tax reform is to create growth in the economy", Thune said.

-No BAT, man: Part of how House Speaker Paul Ryan wanted to pay for this (and it would still only be part) was through what's formally called a border-adjustment tax, or BAT. He's suggested he'd prefer something different that would tax imports, and even mentioned something called a "reciprocal" tax without much explanation as what a reciprocal tax is or how it would work.

The Senate's No. 3 Republican is not expecting President Trump's tax plan to include infrastructure spending, though he cautioned that he hasn't seen a draft of the proposal.

Trump has spent little time discussing education issues since taking office, despite promising during the campaign to deliver more control to state and local entities. Instead, their profits are distributed directly to their owners, who then pay taxes on them as normal income. What's more: The experts not only calculated a disturbingly low credit for those families-less than the price of their dinner, in most cases-but point out that the credit, no matter how much it stood to benefit families, would only be awarded in the form of a tax return. And in the case of millions of low- and middle-income families, the breaks would raise their tax burden when combined with Trump's other proposals to eliminate head of household status, repeal personal exemptions and raise the lowest income tax rate to 12% from 10% now. Mainly because, as the Times report notes, the popular deductions (like the one for mortgage interest) may have to be eliminated to achieve Trump's "politically risky pursuit".