SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) – Donald Trump’s wealth has helped define the 2016 presidential race and it is also shaping the campaign’s tax debate.
Trump contends he has the expertise to fix the tax code and close loopholes like the ones that may have let him go nearly two decades without paying federal income taxes. Hillary Clinton, he said in the last debate, won’t. “She complains that Donald Trump took advantage of the tax code,” Trump said. “Well, why didn’t she change it?”
But Clinton now is proposing changes to the tax code that would bite into the developer-turned-presidential candidate’s bottom line and that of his family, including limiting one provision that many in Trump’s industry use. Trump, meanwhile, is proposing changes that would benefit wealthy families like his – as well as the Clintons.
A new analysis from the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center found that Clinton would dramatically raise taxes for the wealthy – the average member of the top 0.1 percent would pay more than $800,000 extra under her plan. Trump, by contrast, would cut taxes largely across the board, but far more dramatically for the wealthy – typical members of the top 0.1 percent would see incomes rise by more than $1 million.
“In almost every meaningful respect these plans are mirror images,” said Len Burman, a former Treasury official under President Bill Clinton who is director of the center, a joint project between two nonpartisan Washington think-tanks.