Letter: GOP tax plans benefit rich at expense of others

A great triumph of civilization was to grade taxation to equalize the relative pain of taxation for each income earner. Tax them proportionally the same and everyone pays for government with the same degree of sacrifice.

It is a concept turned on its head in the Republican tax bill. The absurdly rich disproportionately benefit at the expense of the poor and middle class. The basic proposition of the bill is a corporate tax cut from 35 percent to 20 percent, making American corporation more competitive, increasing profits and wages by $3,000 to $7,000 per household

Numerous tax loopholes created by an army of lobbyist and advanced in fullest measure by corporate tax lawyers have reduced the average effective state-federal tax a corporation pays to 18.1 percent. The effective rate for Canada, Britain, France, Germany and Japan is 19.4 percent.

The claim of workers receiving higher wages has that ring of “too good to be true,” and it is. There was no such surge in income after Congress slashed the corporate tax rate in the 1980s. The initial benefit of a $1,000 tax cut for a middle class America becomes a collective loss of $5.3 billion by 2027 for people earning $40,000 to $50,000.

This story was originally published December 8, 2017 at 5:11 PM with the headline "Letter: GOP tax plans benefit rich at expense of others."