Curator’s note: If you want to see the real world consequences of this tax break, see articles on the Daily News section of this website under Kansas. Kansas instituted a similar policy and it has been an economic disaster. Kansas lost revenue, the economy performed significantly worse that other states and caused severe public sector funding for education and other services. Recently Kansas has increased taxes and Democrats have won elections with the goal of putting Kansas back on a good economic footing. This is what we have to look forward to for the whole country now.
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Now comes the fun part — the part where it pays to be naughty.
You see, the second most important piece of this tax bill, after the corporate tax giveaway, is a drastic tax cut for business owners, who will end up paying much less in taxes than people with the same income who work as someone else’s employee.
It’s hard to come up with any good rationale for this move, which will discriminate among taxpayers in a way that bears no relationship to any coherent policy goal. It will, however, offer a big financial windfall to a number of elected officials, especially Donald Trump.
And it will also open the door to a lot of tax-system gaming.
