Saturday, November 18, 2017

Our Tax Reform Plan: Lift the Public

During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to reform our tax codes. Now that he is in office, Congress has taken on the challenge, and will be battling over the plan at least until the end of the year.

In August, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan visited Portland, Oregon, and spoke about the need for tax reform. He believes the U.S. "has the worst tax system in the industrialized world." Our organization is presently based in Oregon, so we used his trip as an opportunity to tell him about an Oregon plan for tax reform that benefits everyone--our Lift the Public Plan, which can be considered the best tax reform plan.

The Lift the Public Plan requires only one small change to the  I.R.S. 501(c)3 tax code to make any business partially tax exempt, but the plan benefits everyone from the top 1% to the people on fixed incomes, and even the homeless. Under the plan, merchants and service providers set two prices for goods and services, and the customer chooses which price to pay. If he or she chooses the lower price, it is taxed as usual. Choosing the slightly higher price puts it into the Lift the Public Plan, and the money goes to fund a program to train entrepreneurs, or they can also donate goods and services to a Lift the Public Shop in their town where everything in the store is given out free. This helps to stabilize the local economy during difficult economic times, and to allow for steady growth as entrepreneurs start small businesses. Landlords can also become partially tax exempt if their renters are Lift the Public Plan businesses. The benefits of the plan can be spread by extending the tax exemption to their vendors.



If our organization was a business, here is a partial list of the vendors to whom we could pass on our tax exemption:

Acco Brands Day Timer
Amazon
AT&T
BiMart
Fred Meyer
GoDaddy
Stamps.com
Vistaprint

Then, they could pass on tax exemption to their vendors, and so on.