Dear Editor:

To adoring crowds at his 2020 re-election rallies, Donald Trump calls for tax reform, based on the fraudulent claim that in America, “We have the highest taxes in the world.” Attempting to build on this mound of sand, he demands (without any realistic or detailed plan) that the top corporate tax rate be cut to 15 percent and the rate for wealthiest individuals be lowered by 5 percent.

This massive giveaway to the richest companies and families -- coupled with vague promises of a trillion-dollar infrastructure program, disaster relief for Texas and Florida, and his mythical Wall -- would increase our national deficits and debt astronomically.

Dana Dow has echoed Trump’s lie about American taxation in this paper last week. The facts, however, contradict them:

1) The U.S. effective corporate tax is 18.6 percent, lower than that of Argentina, Japan, and the U.K.

2) As a percentage of GDP, the U.S. corporate tax revenues are only 2.2 percent -- well below the OECD average of 2.8 percent.

3) We are not by any means “the most taxed nation on Earth.” All of our tax liabilities combined, as a percentage of GDP, are 26 percent, placing the U.S. fourth from the bottom of OECD countries, whose average is 34 percent.

When you consider the affluence and quality of life in the nations at the top of the tax list – Denmark, France, Belgium, and Finland – it begs the question about the relationship between true patriotism and one’s willingness to share in the fiscal responsibilities of making one’s country “great.”

Finally, let us consider how “punishing” and “burdensome” our corporate taxes have been since the end of the Great Recession: U.S. corporate profits have risen steeply from a “low” of $800 billion to an all-time high in 2017 of $1.7 trillion. Much of that cash-on-hand has been allocated to stock buy-backs for executives, who make 949 times as much as their average employees.

The Republican dream of “tax relief” (read: welfare) for our wealthiest corporations and individuals will only exacerbate the greatest threat to our national integrity: income inequality.

Bill Hammond

Trevett