Ryan Farther-Reaching Than Romney On Taxes Without Detail
By Richard Rubin - Aug 12, 2012 11:00 PM CT
Representative Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s choice for vice president, has offered a more far- reaching reshaping of the U.S. tax system than the man at the top of the ticket, while neither candidate has explained how to pay for his plans.
Like Romney, the Wisconsin Republican proposes cutting top tax rates for individuals and corporations in ways that would require eliminating hundreds of billions of dollars a year in tax breaks to avoid increasing the federal budget deficit.
Yet Ryan, 42, goes further than Romney, who would cut individual tax rates by 20 percent, drop the corporate tax rate to 25 percent and eliminate the estate tax and alternative minimum tax. In his 2010 “Roadmap for America’s Future,” Ryan proposed eliminating taxes on corporate income, estates, dividends, interest and capital gains. He would simplify the individual income tax system into a two-rate structure topping out at 25 percent and impose what is effectively an 8.5 percent value-added tax.
“You could not do that without substantially shifting the tax burden to the middle class and below” and reducing tax burdens on affluent households, said Edward Kleinbard, a tax law professor at the University of Southern California. “Those are just inescapable facts.”
Ryan and Romney, 65, have refused to provide details on what tax breaks they would curtail or eliminate to offset the revenue loss from their rate cuts. Romney has said that he won’t cut the share of taxes that the rich pay.
more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-13/ryan-farther-reaching-than-romney-on-taxes-without-detail.html