Trump and taxes

It seems that this is the week of tax mysteries of Trump. One of the mysteries is why Donald Trump, unlike any other important official candidate of the modern era, refuses to publish their tax returns. The other is the reason why, having decided that you need to settle their ridiculous experts tax cut proposals, has chosen to request the services of a panda is not able to think clearly.

On the first mystery: the excuse of Trump, who can not publish their tax returns while being audited, is a blatant lie. On the contrary, the fact that you are doing an audit (or so he says) should facilitate the publication of statements; after all, you need not fear that gives rise to an audit. It is clear that must hide something. What?

Could be the few taxes paid, revelation hurt Mitt Romney in 2012. But I doubt it; given the trajectory of Trump, probably you boast that their ability to play with the tax system shows how smart he is, compared to all the losers out there.

My guess, with which many observers agree, is that the dark hidden secret in these statements is that it is not as rich as it pretends to be. In Trumpilandia, the revelation that his fortune only amounts to a couple of thousands of millions of dollars-maybe even less than billion- would be a terrible humiliation. So will try to muddle through. Of course, if successful, we will never know.

Meanwhile, however, we can analyze the policy proposals of the candidate. And what has happened in this area is so revealing in its own way, as his attempt to evade the scrutiny of your personal finances.

This is the story so far: last fall, Trump hinted That break with Republican orthodoxy by taxing the rich. But then a tax plan to have Announced That, in fact, lavished tax cuts to the wealthiest. And, According to independent analysis, it triggers Also add acerca the deficit to $ 10 trillion to the national debt Within a decade.

But the inconsistency Between rhetoric and concrete Proposals Trump does not seem to Have Been harmed During the Republican primary. Nor the tremendous irresponsibility That Represent These specific details, Perhaps Because all major candidates for the Republican nomination proposing huge tax cuts for the rich Might burst budgets. It is true That none of them was as crazy as Trump's plan, but probably not Those distinctions Weighed heavily Among primary voters (four billion, 10 billion, so what?).

However, now it has secured That the nomination, Trump Apparently the need to look feels more respectable. The goal, I suspect, is to reduce The most striking figures is enough to start the propensity of the media to false equivalences. What Hillary Clinton has a plan whos That Increases revenue, while Donald Trump will cost four billion dollars, claims That, Although I will not Affect the deficit? They are the same thing.

Oh, and meanwhile, I have returned to insinuate That Could raise them and then a tax the rich have recanted, while the average swallowed it all gullible.

But the really interesting is who has used Trump, According to Politico, to review Their plans: Larry Kudlow, CNBC, and Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation. When reading the news, economic Analysts from across the US will Have choked on coffee.

For those who are not aware of these issues, history reveals that Kudlow is wrong ... well, everything. In 2005, he mocked the "obsessed bubble which foresaw the collapse of housing prices in Las Vegas or Naples (Florida) sink consumption, the rest of the economy and the entire stock market" ( that was exactly what happened). In 2007 he predicted three years of prosperity "smoothly". And so on.

Moore has a history of comparable predictions, but also has an extraordinary inability to see the facts clearly. Perhaps the best known is when he tried to refute my arguments with an article detailing the alleged benefits of state tax cuts; Incredibly, not one of the figures of that article was correct.

So why, of all possible people, Trump would resort to these two, ahem, fix your numbers?

Perhaps the case of a peace offering, an attempt to reassure the party people bringing Kudlow and Moore, who are influential members of the Republican leadership (which, incidentally, says a lot of his party).

But I suspect that the explanation is simple: the candidate has no idea who is responsible and who is not. I mean, it's not as if he himself had knowledge of economics, or even know what they do not know. For example, it continues to assert that America has the highest taxes in the world, when in fact we have the lowest among advanced countries.

So probably has been limited to choosing a couple of guys who've seen on television, assuming that if they are there is because they know what they are talking.

Now, you may wonder how someone so careless and so little curiosity has been so successful in business. Although a possible answer would be how much success he has had in reality. What's in those tax returns?