During a town hall on Fox News on Tuesday, House Speaker Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) stated that under the House tax bill, the average taxpayer in every single income group and state will get a tax cut, but people, ” especially much higher income people who can utilize all the loopholes that are out there,” “may not be as well off.”
Ryan said, “This tax bill, for the average taxpayer in every income group, gets a tax cut. This tax bill, for average taxpayers in every state, gets a tax cut. Now, I’m sure that there are going to be people out there, especially much higher income people who can utilize all the loopholes that are out there, that can hire an accountant or a tax lawyer to utilize a bunch of loopholes that are in the tax code, and by losing some of those loopholes, they may not be as well off. But the whole purpose of this is to take away those loopholes, so you can lower everybody’s tax rates across the board. The whole purpose of this is to take away loopholes and just give everybody a general tax cut.”
Ryan added that the higher income group he was referring to are “People above a million. I’m talking about people who are extremely wealthy. The people who are very, very wealthy utilize lots of different tax loopholes. … With this plan, 90% of Americans will be able to use the standard deduction. you can fit your taxes… on — literally on a postcard. … By doubling the standard deduction, that basically says 9 out of 10 taxpayers don’t have to use itemized deductions. they can just take the standard deduction and they get lower taxes. So, we’re talking about the 10% of Americans remaining who are very high income earners. … [W]ho may have some disproportionate amount of loopholes that they may not get their taxes lowered.”
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