Carson Unveils ‘Prescription for Growth’ — 14.9 Percent Flat Tax, ‘Nobody That Doesn’t Pay Something’

Monday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson unveiled his economic plan, which he deemed the “Prescription for Growth” and includes a focus on the current federal taxation system.

“It would about 14.9 percent precisely because we worked out all the numbers very specifically,” Carson said. “No deductions, no loopholes – applies to everybody across the board. Go back to the Constitution. Recognize why taxation exists. It’s because we need money to run the government. It’s not to control people’s behavior and do all these other things that’s been added in with these 80,000 pages of tax regulations. So we want to do that. We also want to change the corporate tax rate — bring that in line with everything else, 14.9 percent.”

Carson also explained why his plan has everyone contributing in some form and added that all 330 million Americans have to contribute in some way to compete against other economies.

“There’s nobody that doesn’t pay something,” he added. “Now for people below the poverty level, you know we have a mechanism where they do contribute something. It may not be at the 14.9 percent because we don’t want to add to their woes. But we do have other things in place to try to increase their opportunities because we’re not looking to keep people in a state of dependency. We’re looking to provide a ladder to move people upward because we only have 330 million people and we got to develop all of them if we’re going to keep with China with 1.4 billion and India and places like that.”

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