Today, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) economist and tax expert Alex Brill released a pro-growth, progressive, and practical tax reform proposal. Brill explains that six simple changes to the tax code can create an economic environment that improves our global competitiveness.
Brill’s revenue neutral plan curbs certain existing tax breaks that primarily benefit higher income earners in order to lower the corporate tax rate to 25 percent and promote economic growth.
Brill’s plan would:
- Phase down the corporate tax rate to 25 percent to promote global competitiveness and foster domestic investment.
- Curtail the tax inducement for excessive financial leverage and reduce the tax code's bias in favor of debt relative to equity financing by disallowing 10 percent of C corporations’ interest expense deduction.
- Improve the tax treatment of investment by making permanent the 50 percent bonus depreciation provision now in effect but scheduled to expire at the end of 2012.
- Encourage the flow of capital from the less productive housing sector into the innovative business sector by reducing the tax benefit for the home mortgage interest deduction.
- Phase out the federal tax incentive for higher state and local taxes by removing the state and local tax deduction.
- Repeal the alternative minimum tax (AMT) to eliminate its compliance burden.
Read the full plan here.
Alex Brill, former policy director and chief economist to the House Ways and Means Committee, also served on the staff of the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). Brill is available for interviews and can be reached at alex.brill@aei.org.
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