In a conference call with reporters on Wednesday to explain the Republican tax simplification plan, Congressman Sean Duffy, R-WI7, criticized Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, for not believing taxpayers know better how to spend their money than the government. “So instead of fighting to reduce taxes, she’s voted to raise taxes and fees 407 times,” Duffy said.
“In 2012, she voted against a small business tax cut which would have been targeted at businesses with less than 100 employees,” Duffy said. “It would have given them a 20 percent reduction in their taxable incomes.”
Duffy also criticized Baldwin for supporting $1 trillion in new taxes for Obamacare. “On top of that, she signed on with the Bernie Sanders single-payer health care system,” Duffy said. “Which would bring you $15.3 trillion of taxes over ten years which, by the way, doesn’t even pay for the whole plan.”
The Sanders plan would increase taxes on employers by 7.5 percent and a four percent income tax increase on wage earners.
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“Tammy has the distinction of being the only Trump state Democrat in favor of a $15.3 trillion tax increase in Bernie-Care,” Duffy said.
Duffy said most Democrats in Congress agree that the corporate tax rate is too high to be competitive but they’re under pressure from the “resist” movement not to cooperate on tax reform.
“But I think Senator Baldwin is an outlier. She doesn’t think that an American family or business can better spend their money,” Duffy said. “She thinks the federal government, the bureaucrats in this town, can spend your money better than you can in this town.”
Before criticizing Baldwin, Duffy explained the Republican plan to simplify the federal tax code.
“We have a strategy that will simplify the tax code,” Duffy said. “Remove a lot of the preferences and loopholes that frankly a lot of the wealthiest Americans use to reduce their taxes.”
The plan would bring all of the rates down and then simplify the code further by reducing the number of tax brackets to three.
“It’s a simplification that we think will help middle-income earners in Wisconsin and America file their tax returns on a postcard,” Duffy said. “That simplification is music to their ears.”
The bottom rate would be reduced from ten percent to zero. The fifteen percent tax bracket would drop to twelve percent. The other two brackets would be at 25 percent and 35 percent.
Duffy said that the key change in the tax code is reducing the corporate income tax to make it more competitive internationally.
“When we see the American tax code stunting growth and innovation and investment in America, that has a massive impact on American and Wisconsin families,” Duffy said.
A change in the corporate tax code could make America the leader in capital and investment again, according to Duffy.
Duffy also said that reducing the rates on “pass through” businesses was important, and they reduce the income tax rate to 25 percent on those businesses. The tax simplification plan also gets rid of the Alternative Minimum Tax and the “death tax,” the inheritance tax.
On the latter tax, Duffy told the story of a family business whose members do not fly on airplanes together because of the tax. “If more than one died at the same time, they won’t be able to pay the taxes,” Duffy said. “They would end up selling the company which is a big deal for the community in which they reside.”
Duffy said that after the failure to pass a change to Obamacare through the Senate, the Republicans there have a greater sense of urgency to get tax reform done. With both houses of Congress in agreement with President Donald Trump on the framework of tax reform, “That’s light years ahead of where we were in the strategy on health care,” Duffy said. “So the lessons were learned.”
