Despite widespread disappointment over MSNBC host Rachel Maddow's handling of a scoop about President Trump's 2005 tax return, Vox points out that there is one big takeaway from all the hullabaloo: Trump "has proposed a tax plan that would have made his tax bill much, much lower."
It all comes down to the alternative minimum tax, which acts as a counterweight to wealthy people's deductions, credits, and the like. "The AMT added $31.3 million to [Trump's] total tax bill [in 2005], bringing his overall effective tax rate to about 25 percent," Vox writes, up from what otherwise would have been an effective tax rate of less than 3.5 percent.
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