Pawlenty’s Plan: Half Million Dollar Tax Cut per Millionaire

Townhall Staff

Jun 10, 2011 4:20 PM Jun 10, 2011

Opinion

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If you were worried about millionaires’ meager take-home pay, you’ll love Tim Pawlenty’s tax plan. My former colleagues at the Tax Policy Center (TPC) crunched the numbers and estimated that the governor’s proposal would cut taxes by an average of $490,000 per millionaire in 2013. It would boost their average after-tax income from about $2 million to $2.5 million.

By comparison, people earning $40,000 to $50,000 would get an average tax cut of about $700, or less than 2 percent of after-tax income.

TPC estimates that the proposal would also cut revenues by $7.6 trillion over the next 10 years. Add in additional interest on the debt and the total cost would be more like $9 or $10 trillion. And, as I noted in my post on Wednesday, once the tax lawyers start working with the plan’s giant new tax loopholes, revenues would shrink even more.