Show Us Your Tax Reforms

The president needs a win, and he’s picked the federal tax code as the issue on which to take a stand. On March 24, still stinging from his failure to repeal and replace Obamacare, Donald Trump told reporters he’d “start going very, very strongly for the big tax cuts and tax reform.” Taxes, he said, “will be next.”

Judging from the fiasco over the American Health Care Act, there’s good reason to think Trump is about to get in over his head again. The federal tax code is one of the world’s most complicated machines, and he hasn’t even released the outlines of a plan for how to fix it, unless “phenomenal” counts as a description. What we have heard of the plan is inconsistent: Trump has promised big cuts in top income tax rates, which would benefit the rich, while Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has insisted that there will be no absolute tax cut for the upper class. That circle can’t be squared.