Snap Fact #322 - Comparing Platforms:  REFORM AND CLOSE all loopholes in Taxes

This Snap Fact is part of a major multi-part series that will compare the Democratic and Republican Platforms. These documents are the philosophical foundations that tell us how the winning candidate will govern.

A lot of work went into this series researched by Allen Robbins.

Outside of The Rational Majority’s SNAP-CAP heading, every word in the body of each SNAP-CAP is taken verbatim from 100s of pages comprising the two party platforms. Read and compare these CAPS so you will know which candidate is on YOUR side.

Democrat: Rebuilding Middle Class Security - The President knew from the start that to rebuild true middle class security, we can’t just cut our way to prosperity. We must out-educate, out-innovate, and out-build the world. We need an economy that creates the jobs of the future and makes things the rest of the world buys – not one built on outsourcing, loopholes, or risky financial deals that jeopardize everyone, especially the middle class.

We’ve already made historic progress. States have more flexibility to raise standards and reform schools, more students are receiving grants and scholarships, and young adults can stay on their parents’ health insurance plans as they finish their education and enter the workforce. More working families than ever before have received tax cuts, and fuel-efficiency standards are doubling. The President cracked down on Wall Street recklessness and abuses by health insurance, credit card, and mortgage companies.

Republican: Delinquency in paying taxes and repaying student loans has been too common in some segments of the civil service. A Republican Administration will make enforcement among its own employees a priority and, unlike the current Administration, will name to public office no one who has failed to meet their financial obligations to the government and fellow taxpayers.

In any restructuring of federal taxation, to guard against hyper taxation of the American people, any value added tax or national sales tax must be tied to the simultaneous repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment, which established the federal income tax.

For the sake of low-income families as well as the taxpayers, the federal government’s entire system of public assistance should be reformed to ensure that it promotes work. Each year, this system dispenses nearly $1 trillion in taxpayer funds across a maze of approximately 80 programs that are neither coordinated nor effective in solving poverty and lifting up families. For many individuals collecting benefits from multiple categorical programs, efforts to work or earn more actually result in less money in their pocket through the resulting loss of benefits.  This poverty trap would ensnare even more Americans if ObamaCare were implemented. Taking a part time job, working an extra shift, or even just marrying someone who works, would result in a loss of benefits, thereby discouraging the very acts necessary to achieve the American Dream.

Any restructuring of the federal tax code should recognize the financial impact of the adoption process and the commitment made by adoptive families.

“We seek to increase healthcare choice and options, contain costs and reduce mandates, simplify the system for patients and providers, restore cuts made to Medicare, and equalize the tax treatment of group and individual health insurance plans.”

We must end tax discrimination against the individual purchase of insurance and allow consumers to purchase insurance across State lines. While promoting “co-insurance” products and alternatives to “fee for service,” government must promote Health Savings Accounts and Health Reimbursement Accounts to be used for insurance premiums and should encourage the private sector to rate competing insurance plans.

We pledge to reform the FDA so we can ensure that the U.S. remains the world leader in medical innovation, that device and drug jobs stay in the U.S., that U.S. patients benefit first from new devices and drugs, and that the FDA no longer wastes U.S. taxpayer and innovators’ resources because of bureaucratic red tape and legal uncertainty.