Paul Ryan in Saving Capitalism, by Robert Reich


On Corporations: Eliminate taxes on estates, interest and dividends

The tax reductions in 2001 and 2003, helped high earners but provided even more help to people living off their accumulated wealth. While the top tax rate on income for work dropped from 39.6% to 35%, the top rate on dividends went from 39.6% (taxed as ordinary income) to 15%, and the estate tax was completely eliminated.

Barack Obama rolled back some of these cuts, but many remained. House Republicans sought to go even further. Representative Paul Ryan's so-called road map eliminated all taxes on interest, dividends, capital gains, and estates. By 2013, only 1.4 out of every 1,000 estates owed any estate tax, and the effective rate they paid was only 17 percent.

Meanwhile, the tax rate paid by America's wealthy on their capital gains--the major source of income for the non-working rich--dropped from 33 percent in the late 1980s to 23.8 percent.

Source: Saving Capitalism, by Robert Reich, p.145 May 3, 2016

The above quotations are from Saving Capitalism
For the Many, Not the Few

by Robert B. Reich.
Click here for other excerpts from Saving Capitalism
For the Many, Not the Few

by Robert B. Reich
.
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Page last updated: May 03, 2021