The "carried-interest tax loophole" allows managers of investment funds to treat the bulk of their earnings as long-term capital gains instead of income. The current tax rate on capital gains for higher-income tax brackets is 20%. The ordinary tax rate for the same ultra-wealthy class is 39.6%. This tax break benefits only about 2,000 people in the country. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that taxing carried interest at ordinary rates would net $18 billion over 10 years. ["Capital and Main," by Judith Lewis Mernit, June 21, 2016]
In plain English, yes, Trump is proposing getting rid of a tax loophole that would raise taxes on a few wealthy people, and lower taxes by $18 billion overall (if the revenue were distributed in a way that benefited other taxpayers).
TRUMP: No, I didn't say that at all. This was locker room talk. I'm not proud of it. I apologize to my family. I apologize to the American people. Yes, I'm very embarrassed by it. And we should get on to much more important things and much bigger things.
Q: Are you saying that what you said on that bus 11 years ago--that you did not actually kiss women without consent or grope women without consent?
TRUMP: I have great respect for women. Nobody has more respect for women than I do.
Q: Have you ever done those things?
TRUMP: No, I have not.
CLINTON: What we all saw and heard was Donald talking about women, what he thinks about women, what he does to women. And he has said that the video doesn't represent who he is. But I think it's clear to anyone who heard it that it represents exactly who he is.
TRUMP: Energy is under siege by the Obama administration. The EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, is killing these energy companies. And you take a look at what's happening to steel and the cost of steel and China dumping vast amounts of steel all over the United States, which essentially is killing our steelworkers and our steel companies. It's an absolute disgrace.
CLINTON: First of all, China is illegally dumping steel in the United States and Donald Trump is buying it to build his buildings, putting steelworkers and American steel plants out of business. That's something that I fought against as a senator and that I would have a trade prosecutor to make sure that we don't get taken advantage of by China on steel or anything else.
TRUMP: People that will respect the US Constitution. Also, the Second Amendment, which is totally under siege by people like Clinton. They'll respect the Second Amendment and what it stands for, what it represents.
CLINTON: I respect the Second Amendment. But I believe there should be comprehensive background checks, and we should close the gun show loophole, and close the online loophole.
We have to get rid of the lines around the state, artificial lines, where we stop insurance companies from coming in and competing, because that gives the insurance companies essentially monopolies. We want competition.
You will have the finest health care plan there is. She wants to go to a single-payer plan, which would be a disaster, somewhat similar to Canada. And if you haven't noticed the Canadians, when they need a big operation, when something happens, they come into the United States in many cases because their system is so slow. It's catastrophic in certain ways.
CLINTON: No, he clarified what he meant. If we were to start all over again, we might come up with a different system. But we have an employer-based system. So let's fix what's broken about it, but let's not throw it away.
TRUMP: First of all, everything's broken about it. Everything.
Q: You've said you want to end ObamaCare, but you've also said you want to make coverage accessible for people with pre-existing conditions. How?
TRUMP: We're going to be able to. You're going to have plans that are so good, because we're going to have so much competition in the insurance industry.
Q: Are you going to have a mandate?
TRUMP: ObamaCare, by the way, was a fraud. Jonathan Gruber, the architect of ObamaCare, said it was a great lie, it was a big lie. President Obama said you keep your doctor, you keep your plan. The whole thing was a fraud, and it doesn't work.
A: The Muslim ban is something that in some form has morphed into an extreme vetting from certain areas of the world. We are going to areas like Syria where they're coming in by the tens of thousands because of Obama, and Clinton wants to allow a 550% increase. People are coming into our country & we have no idea who they are, where they are from. This is going to be the greatest Trojan Horse of all time. I believe in building safe zones. I believe in having other people pay for them, as an example, the Gulf states, who are not carrying their weight, but they have nothing but money, and take care of people. I don't want to have, with all the problems this country has and you see going on, hundreds of thousands of people coming in from Syria when we know nothing about them. We know nothing about their values and we know nothing about their love for our country.
A: You're right about Islamophobia, and that's a shame. Whether we like it or not, and we could be very politically correct, there is a problem. And we have to be sure that Muslims come in and report when they see something going on. When they see hatred going on, they have to report it.
Clinton: It's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.
Trump: Because you'd be in jail.
Trump: One thing I'd do is get rid of carried interest. One of the greatest provisions for people like me, to be honest with you, I give up a lot when I run, because I knock out the tax code. Clinton could have done this years ago, by the way. She was a US senator.
Clinton: When I was a senator, I did vote to close corporate loopholes. I voted to close one of the loopholes he took advantage of when he claimed a billion-dollar loss that enabled him to avoid paying taxes.
Trump: We have corporations leaving--massive corporations and little ones, little ones can't form. We're getting rid of regulations which go hand in hand with the lowering of the taxes. We're bringing the [corporate] tax rate down from 35% to 15%. We're cutting taxes for the middle class. We are cutting them big league for the middle class. Clinton is raising your taxes and I'm lowering your taxes.
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The above quotations are from Second Presidential Debate, Oct. 9, 2016, moderated by ABC News' Martha Raddatz and CNN's Anderson Cooper.
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