Voters Shouldn’t Be Fooled By Trump’s Unbelievable Tax Agenda
By Ben Ritz
PPI's Vice President of Policy Development
For Forbes
Throughout his 2024 presidential campaign, former president Donald Trump has spontaneously proposed roughly a dozen tax cuts that sound perfectly targeted toward constituencies he wants to win over. For hourly workers: no taxes on overtime pay. For Nevada service workers: no taxes on tips. For the Michigan auto industry: tax-deductibility for car loan interest. For people in the Southeast that were recently hit by hurricanes: tax deductions for home electricity generators. For seniors: no taxes on Social Security benefits. For military members, firefighters, police, and veterans: no taxes whatsoever. Some of these proposals are so arbitrary that one might think Trump pulled them from a randomized policy generator.
Each one of the proposals is so vague or riddled with obvious flaws that it suggests Trump has given very little thought to how any of them would work. The only reasonable conclusion is that these are not serious policy proposals, they are fools’ gold for voters who Trump thinks won’t know any better. The swing voters who will decide the election next week shouldn’t let Trump’s pandering promises distract them from the high costs that giving him a second presidency would impose. |
