Can elephants learn from failure? We will find out
David Brooks
The Republican health care bill failed because it was a bad bill that had almost no authentic public support. But when Republicans turn to tax reform, they will start on much stronger ground. The Republican plans, at least in their broad conceptions, are built solidly on the two frameworks that have shaped recent tax reform discussions.
The first is simplification, the idea that a cleaner tax code, with fewer loopholes and lower rates, would foster economic growth. The second is substitution, the idea that the overall rate of taxation is less important than what you tax. The current code taxes income heavily and barely taxes consumption. To increase dynamism and growth, we should substitute taxes on investment with taxes on spending — a so-called value-added tax.
The research shows that cutting top marginal rates does not produce as much growth as the supply siders expected. Meanwhile, research by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and others has found that corporate income taxes have a more negative effect on growth than income, payroll or consumption taxes. It’s more important to cut those.
Most rich nations today combine consumption taxes and a low corporate rate. As Kevin Hassett, who’s been mentioned as President Donald Trump’s likely Council of Economic Advisers chairman, has noted, 34 out of the 35 OECD nations have VAT or VAT-like consumption taxes. The United States is the only outlier.
The House Republican tax reform bill embraces both frameworks, but it leans on the substitution framework more heavily.
David A. Weisbach of the University of Chicago Law School notes that the Republican plan would simplify the rates and close a lot of loopholes but wouldn’t radically reshape the taxation of individuals.
Business taxes, meanwhile, would be transformed. The Republican plan cuts corporate rates, allows the immediate expensing of investments and eliminates the taxation of income from sales in foreign countries while raising an import tax, which func- tions sort of like a VAT.
So the basic GOP framework is good. There are at least three main problems. The consumption tax rates are too low to raise enough revenue, the whole thing is much more regressive than it needs to be, and the current political climate is probably going to make the bill much, much worse, not much, much better.
After the health care debacle, Republicans desperately need a win. Moreover, they are massively underestimating how hard tax reform is going to be.
Every loophole in the tax code has a ferocious defender, which scared off all the recent administrations from attempting tax reform. So even just the loophole-closing piece is going to be like Guadalcanal. Raising consumption taxes on top of that — against the ferocious opposition of the retail sector — will be Guadalcanal on stilts.
Tax reform probably won’t survive if the Republicans try to do it the way they tried to do health care — veering over to the extreme right in the hopes of winning the Freedom Caucus. Tax reform will probably only pass with bipartisan buy-in.
Tax reform is one of the few issues where Republican and Democratic thinking overlaps. It’s one of the few ways to significantly boost growth. If Republicans can learn from their errors, they can get this done. If, on the other hand, tax reform fails, the GOP majority is forfeit and Washington will descend to utter dysfunction.