Paul Ryan's Tax Math Just Became More Magical

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http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/paul-ryans-tax-math-just-became-more-magical/273959/

Paul Ryan's latest budget relies on even bigger unnamed savings

There's something breathtaking about any Paul Ryan budget. There are the savage cuts to healthcare and safety-net spending for the young and poor. The deep cuts to education, research, and infrastructure. The way current seniors are spared from any of this fiscal pain. The increased defense spending. And the tax cuts -- heavily tilted towards the rich, of course -- that will supposedly be paid for by eliminating loopholes.

It's this last bit that might be the most breathtaking. Ryan wants to radically simplify the tax code, and radically reduce rates in the process. His plan shrinks our seven brackets into two -- 10 and 25 percent -- while eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax, the Obamacare taxes, and the expanded tax credits from the stimulus. On the corporate side, he wants to move to a territorial system, and lower the rate from 35 to 25 percent. Oh, and he wants revenue to average 18.8 percent of GDP for the next decade. The only way to do all of this is to radically cut tax expenditures too. But Ryan doesn't name a single expenditure he wants to cut. Instead, he bridges the gap with a magic tax reform asterisk.

This isn't a new magic trick for Ryan. It's just a bigger one. His tax plan hasn't changed from its previous iteration, but his revenue goal has. Ryan wants to keep the higher revenue level from Obamacare and the fiscal cliff deal without keeping those tax rates. That means his magic asterisk needs to be even more magic.

How much more magic? About a trillion dollars more.