Trump promises to 'bring back main street' with tax reform proposals
Donald Trump promised he would cut the US business tax rate to 15% on Wednesday during a speech held in Springfield, Missouri.
Trump claimed that the US had gone from a lower tax rate than its economic competitors to one 60% higher.
"When it comes to the business tax, we are dead last," he said, "this cannot be allowed to continue any longer."
Trump, who despite much discussion was yet to release his own tax returns, said that other countries had copied America's success by cutting corporate taxes in order to be more competitive.
The president offered only broad outlines of his proposed tax code, as Republican Party congressmen and the White House had not yet reached an agreement on how the plan should look.
"We're here today to launch our plans to bring back Main Street by reducing the crumbling burden on our companies and on our workers," he said. "The foundation of our job creation agenda is to fundamentally reform our tax code for the first time in more than 30 years."
The last significant tax reform in the United States came in 1986, when after two years of arguing with the speaker of the house and members of the Democratic Party, Ronald Reagan announced a world-leading 34% cut to corporate taxes, a move Donald Trump referred to as "one of the worst ideas in recent history" in a 1999 edition of the Wall Street Journal.
The Trump administration said his tax reform plan for April 2018 was to slash the number of tax brackets from seven to three and bring the corporate tax rate down to 15%. It also called for income tax brackets to be set at 10%, 25% and 35%, the latter for the wealthiest Americans, down from the current 39.6% rate.