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How blatantly heartless and craven is Mitch McConnell's Trumpcare bill? Even Fox Business will tell you. Look at this headline: "Senate Health Bill Gives Huge Tax Cuts to Businesses, High-Income Households." They're not necessarily saying it in a celebratory way, not when they come to the totally gratuitous tax break for the super-rich that's hidden away in the Obamacare repeal part of the bill.
The tax portions of the proposal, a draft of which was released on Thursday in advance of a possible vote next week, are very similar to the elements in the version the House passed last month. The plan operates like the 2010 Affordable Care Act in reverse. Instead of raising taxes to pay for expanded insurance coverage, it reduces coverage and cuts taxes.
The taxes it would remove were created to pay for Obamacare. The most notable is a 3.8% tax on investment income, including capital gains and dividends. The tax only applies to individuals with incomes exceeding $200,000 and married couples making more than $250,000.
Like in the House bill, that tax would be repealed as of Jan. 1, 2017, dropping the top capital-gains tax rate to 20% from 23.8%. Under that measure, people who sold assets earlier this year, even before they knew if the tax cut would happen, would benefit. Retroactive tax cuts like this don't create an incentive and can yield windfall gains for people who already made decisions. [emphasis added]
It's just a stocking stuffer to the main present of huge tax cuts the super-rich are getting; it’s blood money wrung out of Medicaid.
It's totally gratuitous, the largest single tax cut in the whole bill. As Former Special Assistant to President Obama for Economic Policy Seth Hanlon tweeted "There is no reason to make a tax cut on capital gains/dividends *retroactive* unless your purpose is to shovel money to rich people."
A retroactive capital gains tax cut, as Fox Business tells us, gives absolutely no incentive for investing in anything that will boost the economy or create jobs. It's just a reward for being part of the 1 percent.