Watch out small business owners and farmers. You are being misled.
In a speech selling his tax plan in Indianapolis Wednesday, President Trump promised that the elimination of the estate tax would protect millions of small businesses and farmers.
“To protect millions of small businesses and the American farmer, we are finally ending the crushing, the horrible, the unfair estate tax, or as it is often referred to, the death tax,” Trump said. “That means, especially for all of you with small businesses that are really tremendous businesses, you’ll be able to leave them to your family, and your family won’t have to run out and do a fire sale to try and get the money to pay the tax. … The farmers in particular are affected. They have wonderful farms, but they can’t pay the tax, so they have to sell the farm. … So that death tax is a disaster for this country and a disaster for so many small businesses and farmers.”
PolitiFact couldn’t help but pile on the Republican tax plan’s many false promises, by busting Trump with a Pants on Fire for this specific promise. They concluded:
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“Trump said that ending the estate tax would ‘protect millions of small businesses and the American farmer.’
That’s a ridiculously high estimate. Only 5,460 estates even pay the tax each year, according to a credible estimate, and of those, about 80 represented small businesses or farms. We rate the statement Pants on Fire.”
That big help Trump says he’s giving to small businesses and farmers is actually big help to himself and people like him.
The Republican tax plan is being presented with the same kind of disingenuous rhetoric as the Republican health care bills have been. Republicans are literally promising outcomes that they know are not true.
All politicians spin their policies and avoid talking about the pitfalls. But this is something different. Republicans lying about the purpose or outcome of their policies is not the same thing as avoiding discussion of a website glitch on a policy that is meant to, and in fact did, help millions of Americans.
It’s time to ask why Republicans feel the need to lie to sell their policies.
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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