Analysis: Ted Cruz's tax plan would favor the wealthy


The Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan research center, says the tax plan unveiled by Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz in November would cut federal revenues by $8.6 trillion over 10 years, adding significantly to the debt.
Cruz's plan calls for a flat 10 percent individual income tax; repealing the corporate income tax, payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, and estate and gift taxes; increasing the standard deduction and getting rid of most other deductions with the exception of charity and mortgage interest; and introducing a 16 percent value-added consumption tax, Reuters reports.
The Tax Policy Center says the value-added tax would only replace 70 percent of the costs of the tax cuts, and the plan in general would "cut taxes at most income levels, although the highest-income households would benefit the most and the poor the least." The center's analysis finds that taxpayers with incomes over $3.7 million would see an average cut of almost 29 percent, while "households in the middle of the income distribution would receive an average tax cut of $1,800, or 3.2 percent of after-tax income, while taxpayers in the lowest quintile would receive an average tax cut of $46, or 0.4 percent of after-tax income."
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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