A Solid Critique of Perry's Tax Plan

Easily one of the brightest lights in America, Schlafly has a few thoughts on Perry's tax-plan.

Does Rick Perry want to undermine traditional marriage? This question leaps out from his new 20 percent flat-tax plan, which would eliminate all tax advantages for married couples where one spouse is the primary breadwinner.

For more than 60 years, the federal income tax has treated the family as an economic unit. A husband and wife have the benefit of pooling their income in a joint tax return, which affords larger deductions and lower rates.

...If an income tax were truly “flat,” filing status wouldn’t matter because a wife is taxed at the same rate as her husband. But Perry’s so-called flat tax isn’t anywhere near flat, so it matters greatly that he offers the same standard allowances to alternative lifestyles as for married couples. His plan would allow, for example, two unrelated adults living with two children to avoid income tax on their first $50,000 of income.

And here's another:

Although the Perry plan’s most striking feature is its anti-marriage bias, his proposal for corporate income is equally pernicious. Perry would shift businesses to a “territorial” tax system, which means that corporations would be taxed only on the profits they earn inside the United States.

We should do exactly the opposite. We should reduce or eliminate taxes on businesses that employ Americans producing goods and services inside our own country, while increasing taxes on the profits that corporations earn by outsourcing or manufacturing overseas.

Above all, we should eliminate the foreign tax credit, a self-destructive provision that allows corporations to pay China, Venezuela or Saudi Arabia the money they would otherwise owe the U.S. government. Let’s also cut out the deductions that U.S. corporations take for hiring foreigners to do work that Americans can do.

Indeed!