Rudy Giuliani Releases Tax Plan

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani has proposed new tax cuts that go beyond making permanent the Bush tax cuts (which in itself would cost $5 trillion over ten years). Giuliani proposes to also cut the capital gains rate from it's current level of 15 percent down to 10 percent, and to cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent.

CTJ published a paper this past summer showing that the current tax subsidy for capital gains and dividends cost $92 billion in 2005 alone, and nearly three quarters of that went to the richest 0.6 percent of taxpayers. This regressive tax break would become more costly under Giuliani's proposal.

Another CTJ paper from last year found that U.S. corporate taxes as a percentage of GDP are already among the lowest in the developed world, meaning American corporations are not unduly burdened, or made less competitive than those in other countries, by our corporate tax.