Fact check: Club for Growth vs. Trump
A lawyer for Donald Trump fired off a letter to the conservative Club for Growth threatening a “multi-million dollar lawsuit” if the group does not pull its TV ad claiming Trump “supports higher taxes.” Trump’s lawyer says the claim is false, and libelous.
Club for Growth Action, the super PAC of the anti-tax group, says it is merely exposing Trump’s “very liberal” record.
So who is right?
It’s not easy to pin down Trump’s precise position on taxes (though Trump says
Trump told Time on Aug. 18 that his tax changes would not increase the net amount of taxes, but that does not mean it will not raise taxes on some
The ad from Club for Growth Action, which began airing on Sept. 17, is part of a $1 million campaign
Asked for backup, the Club for Growth referred us to a Feb. 15, 2000, article in The Advocate in which Trump states, “My plan to impose a onetime net worth tax of 14.25 percent on the super-wealthy, when combined with our current projected surpluses, will raise enough to pay off the national debt.”
At that time, Trump was mulling a presidential bid, and in a formal statementthen $5.7 trillion
But Trump isn’t advocating anything like that in 2015. In his Aug. 18 interview with Time,Americans for Tax Reform pledge
Specifically, Trump has repeatedly said that he would lower taxes for the middle class and would raise taxes on “carried interest” earned by hedge fund managers.
In an Aug. 26 interview
“So you are proposing you’d like to raise taxes on yourself?” Heilemann asked.
“That’s right. That’s right. I’m OK with it,” Trump said. “You’ve seen my statements, I do very well, I don’t mind paying some taxes. The middle class is getting clobbered in this country. You know the middle class built this country, not the hedge fund guys, but I know people in hedge funds, they pay almost nothing and it’s ridiculous, OK?”
As is the case with Bush’s tax plantax relief
In his letter
On Sept. 23, Trump said
“(It) will be very long on policy and will be a great plan, with a major reduction in taxes for the middle class,” Trump said at a town hall meeting in South Carolina. “… It’s going to be very specific. And I think it’s going to be a plan that creates incentives, and I think it’s going to be a plan that makes people happy, other than maybe the hedge fund guys, who make hundreds of millions of dollars and pay very little tax. I mean, those guys will not exactly love me.”
In response to the letter from Trump’s attorney, Club for Growth Action released this statement
The group also passed along a video urging viewers to “listen to Trump’s own words.”
The Club for Growth video then cuts to a Trump interview on “Fox and Friends” on Aug. 24, in which Trump says, “Rich people are paying the same as people who make very little money. And I think there should be a graduation of some kind, because as you make a certain amount of money, I think you should have to graduate upward.” But that was a response to a question about a flat tax, in which everyone pays the same rate, regardless of income. As Trump noted (at about the 3:25 mark) in the same interview
On the corporate side, The New York Times notes that “Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on American companies that put their factories in other countries … And he has vowed to change laws that allow American companies to benefit from cheaper tax rates by using mergers to base their operations outside the United States.”
In other words, it is possible there would be some who pay higher taxes under Trump’s plan. But without a detailed plan, it’s simply impossible to know who those people might be, how many it might be or how much they might pay. As Vox noted
It may be tempting to attack Trump’s tax plan, in part because he has been vague about details. But contrary to the Club for Growth Action’s blanket claim that Trump “supports higher taxes” (present tense), Trump has said that he would not raise taxes on net.