It's not like we've got much detail to go on, but I think there's something to this. The rhetoric here is somewhat different - usually Republicans are annoyed that a little under half of households don't pay any federal income tax - but as policy the effect on people making not much money is pretty minor. Especially if a bunch of people aren't even filing anymore, presumably we're losing a bunch of the tax credits that right now keep a lot of people's income tax low. Probably a few more households pay no income tax under Trump's plan, but not a huge number. Mostly it's a tax cut for people making lots of money.
There are only two things about it that really strike me as weird for a Republican plan. It's much less aggressive about cutting taxes on capital gains, although it still cuts them. And Trump's just totally unconcerned with whether the math adds up so the magnitude of the cuts is pretty large all around, whereas most Republican proposals try to make it so that it's at least possible that the policy won't generate vastly more debt.
I think we're on the same page- but I'm not entirely sure.
No one in their right mind expected Trump to whip out a bernie sanders style liberal tax policy and flip a middle finger to the GOP. What you were going to get was ALWAYS going to be something palatable to republican voters.
Details don't matter here- this is a stump speech early in the primary. NO ONE'S plan has a prayer of getting to congress much less through it without being heavily, heavily altered- assuming a republican can manage the nigh impossible task of winning the general in the first place.
What matters here is messaging and rhetoric. Yes, trumps plan lowers the top tax bracket and gets rid of the "death tax". republicans love these, why wouldn't he? But what else does it do?
Trump goes all in here and says "the poor won't be paying any federal tax at all. They don't have any money at all, it's pointless to tax them."
what?? do you expect any of the OTHER 11 candidates to whip this one out? The GOP has made demonizing the poor and slapping them with "flat taxes" for not paying their fair share a MAJOR party plank as far back as Steve Forbes. This is not a typical republican talking point, and if a democratic candidate said it the GOP talking heads would have a field day with "free giveaways" the democrats were doing with the money of "real americans".
Second, trump has no problems demonizing "wealthy wall street managers fleecing the public and not paying taxes" as a problem but this one isn't new- for him. perfectly bog standard language on the blue side of the aisle, but I don't expect any other republican candidate to say this or anything close to it. How he gets there isn't all that exciting (repealing the carried interest exemption...yawn) but again- messaging is more important than details here. "Wall street is a problem, they need to pay their fair share" is the takeaway.
Finally- I think the solution to the overseas money comes across as surprisingly reasonable. They've been lobbying hard for another tax holiday forever and refusing to repatriate those dollars at full tax rates. Coming down in the middle at 10% seems like a surprisingly moderate position, given that "job creators need that money!" is the typical talking point. Has anyone else running for the GOP nomination even mentioned this one?
