Alfredo Ortiz, the president and CEO of the Job Creators Network, defends President Trump’s tax cut framework from critics who seek to discredit it by comparing the Republican federal tax cut effort to Kansas state’s 2012 tax cuts.
From Ortiz’s op-ed at Fox News:
The growing momentum behind federal tax cuts has defenders of high taxes worried. Witness their decision to start badmouthing Kansas tax cuts.
Tax-and-spend liberals and their media allies are trying to tie President Trump’s tax reform framework to the 2012 tax cuts in Kansas, which browbeaten Republicans largely reversed earlier this year.
“Kansas tried a tax plan similar to Trump’s. It failed,” reads a recent New York Times headline. “A warning to Washington from Kansas,” reads another from CNN. “Kansas abandons massive tax cuts that provided model for Trump’s plan,” says The Guardian.
A closer look at Kansas’ tax cut experience reveals this argument is more style than substance. That’s not to say Republican tax reform advocates in Congress and the White House can’t learn from Kansas – just not the lesson that pro-tax activists are trying to impart.
Some background: In 2012, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback signed a bill cutting taxes for all state income earners and eliminating them for small businesses that had previously been subject to individual rates. Brownback wanted to give some relief to hardworking taxpayers and boost tepid economic growth.
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