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Joe: Don’t hate Trump for his low tax rate. Hate Congress for making it possible.
Don’t hate Trump for his low tax rate. Hate Congress for making it possible.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally, Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2016, in Prescott Valley, Ariz. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)AP
By
MS NOW staff
Joe Scarborough writes in The Washington Post:
I don’t judge Donald Trump if he did in fact avoid paying income taxes for up to 18 years. Nor do I consider Mitt Romney a man of lesser character for paying a 14 percent tax rate. Nor should anyone attack President Obama for paying a measly 18.7 percent tax rate while his staff members are charged far more. I won’t even bring up the free ride the president is taking on the backs of small-business owners, who pay up to 50 percent of their income in taxes in states such as New York, California or Connecticut while their president sits in the White House with a tax rate 30 percentage points lower.
But let’s not hate the player. Let’s save our contempt for the game. …
Trump, Romney and Obama are doing what you and I try to do every year by paying as little legally to the IRS as possible. But a system that allows these powerful leaders to skate past the tax man on April 15 is deeply offensive and even immoral in these times when the wealthiest Americans get richer by the day, the poorest sink deeper into despair and members of the middle class wage a war against technology, globalization and growing debt that they are sure to lose unless Washington wakes up.
