Think of the qualities of a good tax. Romney hit quite a few of them with his proposal to cap the amount of itemized deductions that you can take at $17,000. From Bloomberg:
" As an option you could say everybody's going to get up to a $17,000 deduction; and you could use your charitable deduction, your home mortgage deduction, or others – your healthcare deduction. And you can fill that bucket, if you will, that $17,000 bucket that way," he said during a visit with Denver's FOX31. "And higher income people might have a lower number." (see link here)
I think Romney has a good idea here, because this policy will "significantly reduce the value of (income tax) deductions", which avoids the constant argument of how much we should tax income. His plan would actually expand the income tax base, without reducing the, "number of filers whose liability is $0." It would raise the taxable income of people near the top of the income scale, not the middle class. There is some question about the 20% tax cut across the board, but one would have to "face a 25% increase in your taxable income to get hit with a tax increase." This tax cut proposal also confuses me, and I agree with the author in saying, "The key problem with the U.S. tax code is not that rates are too high, but that projected budget deficits are too large..." Romney's plan on base broadening can help shrink the deficit.
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