President Trump’s administration is exploring the creation of two controversial new taxes — a value-added tax and a carbon tax — as part of a broad overhaul of the tax code, according to an administration official and one other person briefed on the process.
Sure they are. This sounds more like a strategic leak to demonstrate “seriousness” on Trump’s part than anything that’s really under consideration. Just give it a moment’s thought:
- Republicans hate both VATs and carbon taxes. Hate hate hate.
- A package that included top marginal rate cuts, corporate cuts, plus a VAT and/or a carbon tax to make it revenue neutral, would be almost comically regressive. Democrats would hate it even if the carbon tax were for real.
There’s zero chance that anything like this could make it through Congress. The “administration official” peddling this is just blowing smoke.
UPDATE: Well, this little run up the flagpole didn’t last long:
White House issues a statement saying a carbon tax and a value-added tax are not currently on the table.
— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) April 4, 2017
