Fifty Years of ‘Cut To Grow’: How Changing Narratives around

Though raising taxes on corporations is historically popular, current political discourse around the real opportunity for tax reform in 2025 tends to sell the potential of the corporate tax short.1 The debates over the corporate tax tend to focus, principally, on political opportunities for minimal changes to the law without addressing the crucial importance of the corporate tax in our economy and. [...] In the first year of the US’s involvement in the war, the federal government increased individual and corporate income tax rates to their highest levels yet and expanded the tax base. [...] The Contract, and the Republican takeover of 23 One of the main intentions behind the Contract was to undermine the ability of the federal government to function, thereby driving a wedge between it and its citizens reliant on efficient services. [...] As a result, inequality continued to grow during the Obama era, and the opportunity to reduce it by increasing the corporate tax, as well as the tax on dividends and capital gains while the Democrats held the House and had a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate, was lost. [...] The evolution of the TCJA of 2017 illustrates the cascading nature of tax cuts inspired by the “all taxes are bad taxes,” “cut-to-grow” philosophy adopted by the Republican party and the conservative movement since the Reagan administration.