President Donald Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon is floating the idea of raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for tax cuts to the middle and working classes, Axios reported Sunday.
It's a position likely to be panned by the Republican establishment, the article maintained, but explained that Bannon believed it had a populist appeal. Amid debate over healthcare, White House officials were "teeing up an extremely aggressive tax plan," even as Trump's chief economic adviser Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin were working on efforts focused on slashing corporate tax rates.
"Cohn and Mnuchin aren't bluffing when they say they want to slash the corporate tax rate to 15% from the current 35%. Neither man has any interest in timid tax cuts, and they wager that special interests will relinquish their loopholes if they become convinced their tax rate really will be in the teens," the article said.
Congress has not passed a major tax reform bill since 1986. The White House, assuming no Democrats would support Trump's tax agenda, believed any changes to current tax laws would have to take place before the 2018 midterm elections, Axios maintained.
Calling it a "heck of a challenge" to get a tax reform bill passed by that time, Axios reported Congress must first pass a budget and finish the healthcare debate.
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