Watch below or scroll further down to read the transcript.

For privacy reasons YouTube needs your permission to be loaded.

I Accept

 

“Democrats, meanwhile, hoping to pay for President Biden’s agenda with a new tax plan. Under the proposal, billionaires would be forced to pay taxes on the increased value of assets, like stocks. To get some insight on how this plan works, let’s bring in Steve Ellis, the president of the non-partisan federal budget watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. Also with us, David Williams, president of the non-partisan Taxpayers Protection Alliance. Good morning to both of you gentlemen, good to have you here. Steve, let’s start with you. How effective would this proposal be in your estimation?” – Dave Briggs

“It’s far from clear. I mean, the fact is that it’s never really been done like this. We don’t know what the score from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation will actually be. And then we don’t really know, when it gets implemented, if it will be found constitutional and legal. And so there’s a lot of variables in the air. And this is supposed to be offsetting some of the huge costs that are going to be in this package.” – Steve Ellis

“David, same question to you.” – Dave Briggs

“So, Steve is absolutely right here. Is that we have never done this before. We don’t tax wealth, we tax income. So this would be a really strange departure from that because how do you determine wealth? Is it the amount of stocks, real estate, and, you know, this kind of a snapshot of a moment in time? And I’m concerned that if they move forward with this, that it’s really going to discourage investment and it is going to discourage a lot of risk taking that a lot of rich people, wealthy people do, and businesses do. And what they could potentially do is leave the country if they think that the tax system really isn’t to their advantage. They’ll leave, taking all of their capital with them. So it’s a problem that, you know, to do this. And there’s not going to be a lot of revenue coming out of this at the end of the day.” – David Williams

“Steve, that’s we hear a lot of that. That it would discourage investment. But would it? Where else are billionaires going to put their money?” – Dave Briggs

“I mean, it’s not really clear, Dave, exactly what will happen in this. That’s one of the things that’s a little bit scary. And you’re talking about a very limited number of people. We’re talking about less than 1000 individuals, which is one of the concerns. Are we singling out certain people in this area? And so it is far from clear, though, that we’re going to actually generate the revenue necessary. And so that’s where I’m kind of concerned, is that we’re going to get the spending but we’re not necessarily going to get the revenue to offset that spending. And we are first and foremost a budget watchdog group. We are concerned about the budget and the deficit.” – Steve Ellis

“And David, they’d also be allowed to write off losses. And one thing I know about billionaires, they’re very good at finding losses to write off. So what is the best way to raise revenue without impacting the economy and small business?” – Dave Briggs

“So what you want to do is broaden the tax base and not have it more narrow by, you know, taxing billionaires or the wealthy. Because we saw this during the Obama administration that companies actually left this country. We had inversions where Burger King inverted with Tim Mortons in Canada because they have a lower corporate tax rate. And I know we’re not talking about corporate tax rate, but this is what businesses and wealthy people do, is they move their money elsewhere. So when you hear numbers like 200 to 250 billion dollars that they think that this will generate, I consider that to be optimistic or kind of fools gold at this point, because we don’t know if that’s really going to be the amount of money that’s going to be collected. And there could be a huge budget hole, like Steve said, you know, they’re going to have all the spending, but is the revenue actually going come in to support that spending? And I doubt that it will.” – David Williams

“And Steve, to the point of offshore. We’ve got more than 2 trillion sitting offshore that companies will not bring back. Any effort to get that money back here in the United States? And what are the odds of getting any tax legislation through Congress given the split right now?” – Dave Briggs

“Well, certainly Dave, there’s been effort on redeemed repatriation, basically forcing that money to come back. And so we’ll have to see. Part of that was in the 2017 Tax Act, so we’ll have to see exactly how that all plays out. The idea of getting anything really substantial on something like tax through is not going to happen when have to get 60 votes in the Senate. And that’s why Democrats are pushing what they’re doing through reconciliation because they can get 50 votes plus the Vice President and advance it. It’s the same thing that the Republicans did in 2017 for the for the tax law at that time. This is really their one big bite of this apple and so we’ll have to see exactly how it plays out there.” – Steve Ellis

“I will not hold my breath given senate split there. Steve Ellis, Dave Williams, appreciate you both being here this morning. Thank you.” – Dave Briggs

Share This Story!

Related Posts