As conservative as I often seem, there are still some progressive ideas that attract my sympathies. In particular, I do believe income inequality is a problem that needs correcting before it forces the underclass to the streets. So the question becomes — how do we fix things within the context of a constitutional republic? Here are a few suggestions:
- Trump promised when he ran to eliminate the “carried interest” tax break for hedge fund managers. So far, nada. It’s long since time for him to keep this promise.
- The current tax law allows corporations, like Amazon, sometimes to pay zero taxes. I would be in favor of having an Alternative Minimum Tax rate for corporations ... say 5%.
- Corporations use stock options to inflate senior executives’ take-home into the tens of million dollars. This is a major reason for the huge income gap between these executives and their lowest-paid employees. Those stock options profits are often taxed at a lower capital-gains rate. As I have previously proposed, I believe that, instead, they should be considered always as ordinary income.
- There are other ways that corporations, colleges and other non-profits have to reward their higher-ups with non-taxable benefits ... non-interest-paying loans (like for Harvard’s to Elizabeth Warren), loan forgiveness, low-rent housing, etc. These perks should always be recognized and taxed as ordinary income.
- There are many schemes that the wealthy use to avoid taxes ... like donating fine art, at ridiculously inflated prices, to museums. These deductions should be reduced out of the stratosphere with some meaningful constraints.
- There are literally hundreds of other tax-avoidance mechanisms used by the wealthy to reduce their tax burden. There needs to be a house-cleaning of these work-arounds to eliminate those that are outdated and no longer provide any social benefit.
Enough? Am I now in AOC’s fifth column?
Afterthought: Actually, this fine-art donation tax avoidance might have been changed in the last tax code revision where charitable donations may no longer be deductible ... I’ll have to look into this further.
