Cut the corporate tax rate

Donald Trump and congressional Republican leaders want to reduce the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent, which the Tax Policy Center estimates would cost a staggering $2 trillion over 10 years (that’s about three times what the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, would cost over the same time period).

The standard justification for these cuts is that they’ll boost business and create jobs. During the 2016 Presidential debates, Trump vowed the cut would “be a job creator like we haven’t seen since Ronald Reagan.” The catch is, U.S. corporations’ tax burden is already comparatively lower than our major trading partners, and U.S. multinationals take advantage of so many loopholes that their effective tax rates are nearly half the statutory rate. Corporations as a whole are actually contributing less to total taxes than they did in the early 1950s: Their share of total tax revenues has dropped from 33 percent down to roughly 10 percent of total revenues.