Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his Democratic opponent Hilary Clinton—who will get the official nod from her party this week—offer Americans a stark choice in 2016, especially when it comes to taxes.
You may already have a general sense of how they differ: Trump’s plan calls for a fairly radical simplification of the tax code that would create four brackets—0%, 10% 20%, and 25%—and give just about everyone a dramatic tax cut; Clinton’s relatively modest plan, meanwhile, would leave income tax rates unchanged for all but the wealthiest Americans, who could see effective rates climb by as much as five percentage points, according to the Tax Policy Center.
But it’s not as easy to tell exactly how the thicket of new rates and rules would actually affect you.
Thankfully, the non-partisan Tax Policy Center in Washington has taken an in-depth look of both proposals. Its detailed analyses are here and here—but to make things simpler, we’ve broken out the numbers for both plans and put them side by side to show just how each candidate’s proposals would affect Americans at a range of income levels.
You may already have a general sense of how they differ: Trump’s plan calls for a fairly radical simplification of the tax code that would create four brackets—0%, 10% 20%, and 25%—and give just about everyone a dramatic tax cut; Clinton’s relatively modest plan, meanwhile, would leave income tax rates unchanged for all but the wealthiest Americans, who could see effective rates climb by as much as five percentage points, according to the Tax Policy Center.
But it’s not as easy to tell exactly how the thicket of new rates and rules would actually affect you.
Thankfully, the non-partisan Tax Policy Center in Washington has taken an in-depth look of both proposals. Its detailed analyses are here and here—but to make things simpler, we’ve broken out the numbers for both plans and put them side by side to show just how each candidate’s proposals would affect Americans at a range of income levels.