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Tax Reform Is on the Comeback

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Overshadowed by this week's CNBC versus the Republican presidential nominees brawl, was the release of Ted Cruz's flat tax plan. The Texas senator would impose a 10 percent tax rate on wage earners and a 16 percent business tax and no deductions.

"Flatter rates," says Mr. Cruz, "will make for a more rapid-growth economy." 

He's right: in virtually all the cases of the last 100 years, lower tax penalties on working and investing have led to more jobs and higher incomes.

It comes on the heels of a plan from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., to adopt a 14.5 percent flat tax. For full disclosure, I'm biased because Senators Paul and Cruz borrowed their flat tax plans with a few of their own unique twists, largely from my book with Arthur Laffer entitled: Return to Prosperity.

The bigger story here is that it's now official: every major Republican candidate has endorsed lower tax rates and fewer loopholes as a way to make our federal tax code fairer and more competitive for American businesses.

The spirit of tax reform is alive and well on one side of the aisle.

Too bad tax reform fever isn't bipartisan as it was in 1986 when by 97-3 the Senate passed the Reagan Tax Reform Act, which closed myriad loopholes and lowered tax rates to 15 percent for the middle class and 10 percent for the rich.

In the modern-day "progressive" Democratic Party, there is no room for a Bill Bradley or Dick Gephardt - two leading sponsors of tax reform in the 1980s. ? Even talking of lowering tax rates gets you excommunicated from the party of envy and redistribution. Very sad.

Bernie Sanders, the socialist Vemont senator who is drawing throngs of fans everywhere he goes as if he were Justin Bieber, wants tax rates back up to 70 percent or more.  ?This sock-it-to-the-rich line is a crowd pleaser, especially with young voters, and draws thunderous applause.

Hillary Clinton is right behind him with her proposed 44 percent tax on capital gains investment income.  The attached figure shows the divide in the left candidates and the right candidates on tax rates.

So to shrink the gap between rich and poor, why not follow the Clinton-Sanders tax model? ? Because soak the rich tax schemes rarely work.

Here's an amazing statistic: the last time tax rates were 70 percent, back in the 1970s, the government got 19 percent of its revenues from the rich. Now with a lower top rate of about 40 percent the government gets about twice as much, about 36 percent of all income taxes, from the rich.

Meanwhile, the U.S. corporate tax of 35 percent is now so much higher than the rate in the rest of the world that a Tax Foundation study has recently concluded that we could raise as much money with a rate of 20 to 25 percent.  ?That's because more businesses would come here and start paying U.S. taxes instead of Irish, Chinese or Canadian taxes.  If you can get the same revenue at a lower tax rate and create more jobs at the same time, why wouldn't we take that deal? The only answer is that the Left gets some kind of weird psychic income from knocking down the rich even if it benefits no one.

Liberals who have a faith-based conviction that tax rates don't matter much in terms of decisions about where businesses or jobs locate should listen to Rick Scott, the governor of Florida, where there is no state income tax at all.

"My favorite governors, are Cuomo (of New York), Brown (of California) and Malloy of Connecticut," he says, grinning. "The more they raise taxes, the more jobs we get in Florida. Every week new businesses are coming here to escape New York and Connecticut."

My conversation with Mr. Scott got me to thinking. Imagine an experiment where we divided America in to two tax zones.  Those states east of the Mississippi River got to keep the current "progressive" tax system - or could even go for the Clinton-Sanders utopia of higher rates. The states west of the Mississippi could adopt a flat tax modeled after what Senators Cruz and Paul have endorsed.   ?

Where would you choose to live?

Where would the growth of enterprise, wages, and jobs happen?

The answer is, of course, self-evident. So let's hope voters in 2016 choose tax reform for all 50 states.

*Stephen Moore is a Fox News contributor and an economic consultant to Freedom Works.

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About The Author

Stephen
Moore

Stephen Moore is a contributing author for CBN News. He was a senior economic advisor to the Trump campaign and is chief economist at The Heritage Foundation, a position he has held since January, 2014. Previously, Moore wrote for The Wall Street Journal and was also a member of The Journal'’s editorial board. As chief economist at Heritage, Moore focuses on advancing public policies that increase the rate of economic growth to help the United States retain its position as the global economic superpower. He also works on budget, fiscal and monetary policy and showcases states that get fiscal