Rand Paul: Let's scrap the current tax code, eliminate special loopholes

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published 18 June 2015

Presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul (R-K.y.) published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today to introduce his new tax plan. In his piece titled, "Blow Up the Tax Code and Start Over," Paul sketches the basic outline of his vision:

I am announcing an over $2 trillion tax cut that would repeal the entire IRS tax code — more than 70,000 pages — and replace it with a low, broad-based tax of 14.5 percent... applied equally to all personal income, including wages, salaries, dividends, capital gains, rents and interest. All deductions except for a mortgage and charities would be eliminated. The first $50,000 of income for a family of four would not be taxed. For low-income working families, the plan would retain the earned-income tax credit. I would also apply this uniform 14.5 percent business-activity tax on all companies — down from as high as nearly 40 percent for small businesses and 35 percent for corporations.

Paul also sounded a populist note, arguing that if everyone "plays by the same rules" of his much-simplified proposal, "no one of privilege, wealth or with an arsenal of lobbyists can game the system to pay a lower rate than working Americans." Indeed, though Paul's plan would reduce taxes on the wealthy's personal income, it would also eliminate special loopholes that currently allow big corporations to finagle low or even negative tax rates.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.