The White House is “absolutely committed” to getting its tax overhaul proposal through Congress by the end of the year — and that plan does not include a 40 percent tax rate for the richest Americans, US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin said.
“Our plan is to have a full-blown release of the plan in the beginning of September, with being able to vote and getting this passed before the end of the year,” Mnuchin said on ABC’s This Week on Sunday.
The “objective” of the proposal is still that no one in the middle class would have a tax increase, Mnuchin said.
“We’re finalizing the details of the plan, so there’s certain issues that are still on the table,” he said.
Mnuchin said there is no consideration being given to a plan reported by the Web site Axios last week that the top personal tax rate should be 40 percent or more. The idea was being pushed by US President Donald Trump’s adviser Stephen Bannon, Axios said.
“I have never heard Steve mention that,” Mnuchin said. “It’s very clear, kind of, we have a proposal out there that the administration has put out, with a top rate of 35 percent where we reduce and eliminate almost every single deduction.”
He added that the administration is aware of the concerns in high-tax states, where taxpayers could have no tax reductions, as well as fewer deductions.
“We’ve heard a lot of feedback from New York, California, New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, and I think we want to be sensitive to those states and those economies as we shape the plan,” Mnuchin said.
Mnuchin said administration officials are meeting with House and Senate leadership “every week” about crafting its proposal.
“We probably met with 300 or 400 different business leaders, outsiders, think tanks,” he added.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
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