Mnuchin says business tax rate at 15 percent in Trump tax plan

On Wednesday we'll get a vague description of "broader principles" that will include huge cuts in the top rates for both individuals and corporations, along with just enough eye candy for the middle class that Trump can pretend it's a tax cut for everyone. This put the president and Congress at an impasse, because Democrats and some Republicans flatly oppose the wall, and point out that Trump has repeatedly insisted that Mexico would pay for it, not US taxpayers.

The system also taxes USA companies on business they do overseas, which has created perverse incentives that drive some American companies to move their headquarters offshore and others to hoard profits in foreign countries in order to avoid a 35 percent haircut on cash repatriated to the U.S.

The president on Friday unexpectedly said at a Treasury Department event that there would be "a big announcement on Wednesday having to do with tax reform". The most noteworthy perhaps is his pledge to repeal and replace Obamacare, which failed when he couldn't bring Republican lawmakers to consensus.

But even putting that aside, the White House's proposed corporate tax cut - lowering the rate from 35% to 15% - is worth paying close attention to. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, told The Associated Press.

Republicans who slammed the growing national debt under President Barack Obama have said they are open to Trump's tax plan, even though it could add trillions of dollars to the deficit over the next decade.

"We fundamentally believe we can get to 3 percent sustained economic growth", Mnuchin said Wednesday morning.

In a speech to Congress in February Trump said: "Right now American companies are taxed at one of the highest rates anywhere in the world". While they use numerous same tax breaks as corporations, they are taxed through the individual tax code, where the top rate is 39.6%.

But a tax overhaul, which again hasn't been done in 30 years, is hard enough without attaching a $1 trillion infrastructure plan and a $500 billion child-care tax credit.

White House officials steadfastly refused to discuss any plan details.

So the question is will Trump simply propose tax cuts, with promises to do real reform later?

The revised release begins without pulling any punches, saying "President Donald J. Trump has done more to break promises and enrich his allies in his first 100 days than any other President in history".

"Doing some kind of tax cut might boost growth a bit, but there are forces that would counteract the tax cut", Doms said.

The 15 percent cut represents a return for Trump to the economic vision that animated his campaign, and a victory of sorts for Mnuchin, who has been a supporter of the plan.

-Modest middle-class cuts: There would also be tax cuts across the board, including a modest one for those considered middle class.

The Wall Street Journal first reported Trump's request to cut the corporate tax rate to 15 percent Monday afternoon. But there are plenty of other unknowns, he added. Seventy-four percent of those polled saw voting as the most effective way to create change, and they saw talking about politics and volunteering as important as well. "They've been all over the map".

A massive cut to corporate tax rates is simply not going to sit well with the American people without complementary cuts to government spending.

For individual taxpayers, the idea touted by Trump and by House Republicans is to reduce taxes for most people, including the wealthy, and streamline the system by reducing the number of tax brackets, simplifying deductions and closing loopholes. On Tuesday, the official scorekeeper for Congress dealt the argument - and Trump's plan - another blow.

"It's very expensive, and that's a problem", Williams said. Instead Trump and senior officials have touted the economic growth that would result from the cuts.