Jon Huntsman: Palin's Tax Proposal Is A 'Great Political Bromide' That Can't Work

WASHINGTON -- Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman has tried his best to carve out a niche within the Republican primary field as the one candidate who's unwilling to dispense with logic in order to score political points. It's what compelled one of his campaign's most memorable moments, when he tweeted that he believed in evolution and climate change. The tweet was interpreted as a sign that Huntsman was a moderate, but it was more likely meant to project reasonableness.

On Sunday, he continued the trend, calling Sarah Palin's pitch to eliminate all federal corporate taxes a "great political bromide" that wasn't based in reality.

"Everybody would love to go down to zero in terms of corporate taxes," Huntsman said during an interview on CBS' "Face The Nation." "How do you do it? How do you make the numbers work? All I'm telling you is I have been there and I have done that. I have worked on tax reform, the most sweeping tax reform we ever saw in the history of our state ... effectively creating a flat tax. I know how difficult it is to make the numbers work. You have got to find the revenue somewhere that you can reinvest back in the tax code to bring down the rate for everybody."

"Our [proposal] is based on the real world and where we can make the numbers actually work," he added.

The comment was not a swipe at Palin, who made her pitch for a zero federal corporate tax rate during a speech at an Iowa Tea Party rally Saturday, so much as an effort to explain that the numbers she was proposing didn't add up.

Still, it will expose Huntsman to charges that his shtick is nothing more than Republican moderation -- which is rather absurd, given that his own tax policy reform proposal is actually quite conservative.

In a plan laid out last week, Huntsman called for eliminating all deductions, including those on mortgage interest, and child tax credits, as well as benefits for education and childcare. Social Security benefits would become taxable, while the taxes on capital gains and dividends would be eliminated. The tax rates for corporations would go from 35 percent to 25 percent while the tax rates on individual incomes would broken down to three levels: 8 percent, 14 percent and, for the highest earners, 23 percent.
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Comments

[kcampese]

12:41 PM on 09/23/2011

His plan would also eliminate the tax deduction for charitable contributions. Charities are already suffering becuase of the recession. This wiould deepen the problem by eliminating any large cash donations and car donations. http://www.cars4charities.org/

[amaboss52]

01:15 PM on 09/10/2011

Do any of the repubs have an idea that isn't stupid, harmful or recycled? I mean how many times will our country have to get to the brink of collapse before they realize they're ideas are unsustainable? The only leading any of these candidate will do is leading us down the toilet once again!

[Isom Dart]

12:51 PM on 09/07/2011

to all that fail to understand a state sales tax, a sales tax only...no other state tax.

[ranroddeb]

05:52 PM on 09/06/2011

This clod is just trying to spark enough interest so he can run as Obama's stealth third party spoiler. That's why O-blam-u needs a 1 billion dollar warchest 750 million for him and 250 million for the spoiler.

[ultrawiz]

12:35 PM on 09/06/2011

Eliminate taxes on capital gains while taxing Social Security? Grandma can still afford to eat dog food so let's tax what little she gets, right? Meanwhile let's eliminate taxes on capital gains so those poor fund managers can get that new Rolls Royce instead of having to settle for a Bentley, right? Where do these clowns come from?

[mxytsplyk]

07:56 PM on 09/06/2011

This sort of idiocy is how we got the French and Bolshevik revolutions (and extinction for the wealthy who were too self-absorbed to flee). But people keep doing it. They want more for themselves and believe they can only achieve that by taking it from someone else. Humanityʻs Big Fail.

[Viable Way]

09:34 PM on 09/06/2011

This is the other point....the Rights: education, wellness care, shelter/food, pension and FAIR MARKET PRACTICES and FAIR WORKFARE.

Following that plan GROWS us out of debt by actually producing something, affordable, sustainable agriculture, upgraded infrastructure or manufactured goods of high quality. Maybe if we invested in ourselves, instead of Wall Street, we would do a little better. Let them play the ZERO SUM GAME of stock market and commodities market trading.

[Viable Way]

06:43 PM on 09/11/2011

My guess is the taxes on SS income would be for higher earners. and DOG FOOD cannot be purchased with food stamps.

I am wondering about the universal call for elimination of taxes on capital gains myself. If it taxes were phased in as income rose, it would make some sense. However, I agree that another tax break for the wealthy BITES!

But I PROPOSE taking money away from WALL STREET and putting it in LOCAL CREDIT UNIONS and small MEMBERSHIP INVESTMENT GROUPS that invest in real estate, solar panels and gray water recycling rehabilitation of housing. Things that will insulate THIS GRANDMA from higher utility bills and things we can do ourselves!

[librldem]

12:21 PM on 09/06/2011

Palin herself is a political bromide that can't work.

[StopMakingSense2]

11:21 AM on 09/06/2011

If it can't work you can count on full republican support. Then they can add it to the list of their other failures..

[banksix]

02:25 AM on 09/06/2011

THis guy is a real sissy-boy ...I think I saw him in a m4m ad on craigslist

[rview]

10:34 PM on 09/05/2011

How is he different from Pawlenty?

[DRaymond]

08:46 PM on 09/05/2011

The amazing thing is that John Huntsman claims (accurately) that Palin's idea to reduce corporate taxes to zero is a bromide.  But THEN he goes and proposes that capital gains and dividends be tax free!  Does he have any clue how huge of a revenue hole that would create?  Does he realize that it means that the super-rich, people like Warren Buffet and hedge fund managers, would become a tax-free class of society?

The top 400 tax returns in the US contain 13.1 percent of all the capital gains in the country.   They currently pay about 18 percent in federal taxes, well less than many middle income Americans.  Huntsman wants to reduce them to essentially zero.  Yeah, that sounds fair.

[moose and squirrel]

08:28 AM on 09/06/2011

"my plan is less not credible than hers..."

[sfurr]

12:26 PM on 09/06/2011

What you claim is not necessarily true. Buffet himself outlined the most egregious elements of the current tax policy that allows hedge fund managers to treat short-term speculation (aka "gambling") the same as long-term investing for the purposes of tax treatment.

This element can be fairly readily addressed by insisting that capital gains treatment is only available for long positions held for one to two years at a minimum. Likewise, it should not be that difficult to constrain how portfolio managers are able to take management fees on investments under their management.

Please note that under such a near-flat tax regime, dividends would be more or less self-regulating, since the temptation to take unearned income as dividends would be reduced as the highest personal tax rate would be below the corporate tax rate and dividends would be paid from after-tax dollars. i.e. there would be less tax-efficiency to dividends and the corporate taxes would be unavoidable, yielding offsetting revenue.

So you are constructing a strawman to criticize Huntsman on his reasoned, rational approach. I am with you on not liking tax elimination on unearned income, but that comes down to a concern on fairness and equality. I view the overall structure as regressive, but I am not sure that there would be a revenue hole.

[DRaymond]

09:23 PM on 09/06/2011

It is one thing to say that long term capital gains should be applied only to genuinely long term positions (but stockbrokers hate buy-and-hold investing).  it is another to make them tax free like Huntsman wants.

In reality there is a simple and broadly accepted as fair way of treating capital gains of any duration:  You treat them as ordinary income with a net present value adjustment on the basis.

[vonalxao]

07:41 PM on 09/05/2011

Makes me proud to be a democrat.

[ranroddeb]

05:55 PM on 09/06/2011

Isn't it a shame you had to look outside your party to get that feeling.

[vonalxao]

09:38 PM on 09/06/2011

Yes.

[KarateKid]

07:07 PM on 09/05/2011

What do you know, there's ONE Republican candidate who is making concrete proposals to offer up solutions instead of wasting time on sound bites, _hating on the president, complaining, no whining about everything this administration does, trying to appeal to the _dumbed down _teabaggers with glib insults to score _cheap points.

I was beginning to think that's all they had left. At least this guy isn't putting me to sleep but giving me something to consider........

[Veganie]

06:26 PM on 09/05/2011

The former Utah governors plan includes slashing personal and corporate income tax rates by quashing deductions, scrapping capital gains taxes and repealing the current Administrations health-care and financial reform bills.

[Sandeep Singh]

05:26 PM on 09/05/2011

Huntsman will never get elected because he makes too much sense for the Republicans to wrap their heads around.

[Tom Payned]

03:01 PM on 09/05/2011

I am a lifetime dyed in the wool, old style leftie whose always been a proud self-proclaimed LIBERAL, not a redefined "progressive" after Gingrich & Luntz turned LIBERAL into a dirty word.

After listening to John Huntsman on Face The Nation yesterday, I have to admit he's the candidate I'd be most worried about wining the general.

However, if he has the spine to buck the radicals in bagger nation, excluding his pro-life/anti-choice views, & being more pro business than I'd like, at this point into the President's term, I think Huntsman would be more of a democrat than Barrack the Buckler has shown himself to be.

If Huntsman were to jump parties, or start a 3rd party, I'd have to think long & hard about why I'd choose The Buckler over Huntsman at this point.

As it's doubtful The Buckler will grow a pair between now & November 2012, & as he demonstrated on his buckling under on the EPA rules, & can't blame the Republicans for blocking him, since this was strictly an administrative decision they couldn't stop, The Buckler has demonstrated he's a greater Allie of the Oligarch than even Bush on the environment & Social Security reform. The Buckler is even using Frank Luntz poll tested Republican phrases now.

And no, I've never knowingly voted for a Republican in my life. Those darn no-partisan offices may have caused me to cast a vote for a Republican.

[moose and squirrel]

08:30 AM on 09/06/2011

http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2011/09/so-that-ignorance-wont-be-reason-why.html


that sure is alot of 'buckling'....

[amaboss52]

01:05 PM on 09/10/2011

Huntsman also took the pledge to not raise taxes even if it was 10 to 1. He's still stuck in the republican mindset of making the rich richer at the expense of the rest. This is a non starter for a Democrat. He isn't any better than the rest, he just makes it sound like he is. It'll be the same failed repub policies rehashed, it won't improve the country.