Accounting
Trump pushed to embrace 17% income tax for all
Donald Trump is under pressure from economists in his circle to embrace a flat tax rate, softer trade stance and to hold the line on the state and local tax deduction.
The minds behind these proposals include Steve Forbes, of Forbes Media, former White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow and economists Stephen Moore and Arthur Laffer. The men, who aren’t official advisors to his campaign, typically emphasize unleashing the supply potential of the economy with lower taxes, and to a degree that would have been unremarkable in the 1980s but which places them outside the economics mainstream today.
The efforts demonstrate how people around the former president are already lobbying for their preferred economic policies ahead of a potential second term where both taxes and tariffs will be top priorities. Polls show voters trust Trump to handle the economy by a much higher margin than President Joe Biden.
Daniel Steinle/Bloomberg
Forbes said Monday at a New York City event that he is advocating for Trump to support a flat 17% tax rate for all income brackets with “generous” exemptions — an idea he’s pushed for decades including when he ran for president in the late 1990s. For a family of four, he said, he would suggest the first $54,000 of income be exempt from federal income tax.
Moore said that Trump hasn’t yet said he supports a flat tax, which would appear to benefit the rich. Under the current system, tax rates increase as income levels rise, meaning higher-earners are supposed to pay a larger share of their income in taxes compared to those who make less.
Whoever wins the White House in November will be forced to negotiate a tax deal next year because key portions of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts — including individual rates — expire at the end of 2025. That will set up a complex negotiation — particularly if control of Washington is split between Republicans and Democrats — that could make dozens of changes to the Internal Revenue Service code.
Corporate cuts
Kudlow praised Trump’s 2017 tax cut, which lowered the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35%, saying it was an “enormous success.” Laffer said he supports lowering the corporate rate even further, though his ideal goal is to replace the corporate income tax with a value-added tax.
Trump has told allies he wants to keep the 21% rate in place, instead of cutting it further to 15% as he previously proposed, seeking to avoid alienating working-class voters.
Monday’s event was organized by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, a group that counts Forbes, Laffer, Kudlow and Moore among its founders and organizers, and is one of the entities regularly bringing policy ideas to Trump. They say they meet with the former president approximately every six weeks to brief him on policy ideas, share economic data and suggest names for key political appointee posts.
Laffer last month
On the campaign trail, Trump has often said he would pass the “biggest” tax cuts and claims that if he is not elected, taxpayers will see their IRS bills increase under Biden. Trump has not detailed what his tax plan would look like.
“President Trump proudly passed the largest tax CUTS in history,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “When President Trump is back in the White House, he will advocate for more tax cuts for all Americans and reinvigorate America’s energy industry to bring down inflation, lower the cost of living, and pay down our debt.”
Forbes advocated for no taxes on savings and eliminating the estate tax, both changes that would disproportionately benefit the wealthiest Americans.
State and local tax
The advisors are also advocating to maintain or reduce the $10,000 cap on state and local tax, or SALT, deductions. Trump’s 2017 law imposed the $10,000 SALT write-off limit, which was previously unlimited.
That change was most acutely felt in high-tax states, including New York and New Jersey. Democrats are more inclined than Republicans to advocate for expanding the deduction, but a handful of key House GOP lawmakers representing the New York City suburbs and Southern California — districts that will likely determine who controls the House next year — also support expanding the tax break.
Moore said he also doesn’t see eye-to-eye with Trump on trade policy. As president, Trump instigated a bevy of new tariffs, on washing machines, solar panels, steel, aluminum and other goods from China, which economists say have raised prices for consumers and started tariff wars with trading partners.
“I disagree with Trump, and he knows it, on some of the tariff policies,” said Moore, who called himself a “free trade guy.”
Moore said he’s learned to live with Trump’s desire for trade reciprocity and tit-for-tat tariffs.
“The whole idea of this group is to provide President Trump and other top policymakers with the economic advice they need,” he said. “He doesn’t always take our advice, but he likes our thoughts.”
Within SAP Fieldglass, Joule can recommend best-fit templates to generate job postings and statements of work with prefilled information such as the start date and the number of skilled workers needed. Joule embedded across the SAP Business Network can analyze, categorize and transform unstructured invoice rejection errors into structured, actionable insights to reduce the cost of resolving exceptions. Further planned capacities will eventually help match suppliers with new business opportunities. Within SAP Ariba, Joule will enable users to create RFPs and request help with routine inquiries and surface risks. These capabilities will also provide buying recommendations along with supplier summaries from different data sources. In addition, a sustainability scorecard from SAP Ariba helps customers make decisions that align with their organizations’ environmental, social and governance objectives.
Overall, Joule will manage 80% of the most frequently performed tasks in the SAP Ariba portfolio of intelligent spend management and business network solutions.
Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg
During his presentation yesterday at SAP Spend Connect Live, Manoj Swaminathan, president and chief product officer for intelligent spend and business network at SAP, noted that the company has accounted for people’s concerns regarding security and privacy.
“SAP is dedicated to delivering best-in-class solutions infused with AI, empowering you to prioritize strategic initiatives over mundane tasks,” he said during his keynote. “We understand and hear the concerns surrounding data security when implementing AI, which is why we have made no compromises in ensuring our AI capabilities set the standard for compliance. From third-party advisory boards to adhering to the
Beyond Joule’s integration into the wider portfolio of SAP products, he also announced the upcoming release of the SAP Ariba Intake Management solution, designed to address how businesses handle employee requests and process orchestration, starting with procurement. It provides employees with a single place to go for procurement inquiries and visibility on their status. The solution collects employee requests, orchestrates processes across landscapes and applications, and provides visibility on status while shielding employees from process complexity. SAP plans to make SAP Ariba Intake Management available in the first quarter of 2025.
Swaminathan also announced that SAP Business Network will launch a new promote subscription in the first quarter with value-added features to help suppliers differentiate themselves, attract new buyers and grow their businesses. Swaminathan said the subscription will give suppliers recommendations to improve discoverability, advanced search results, supplier profile verification and network catalog APIs. With the help of generative AI tools, suppliers can load their full suite of offerings into the network catalog faster and with enhanced product descriptions and summaries. The new promote subscription will help suppliers identify sales opportunities based on regional search data and use advanced insights to track business growth on the network.
He also announced a new analytics add-on with AI capabilities for SAP Fieldglass solutions, which helps procurement, vendor management and HR professionals to implement agile multichannel talent strategies. The analytics add-on for SAP Fieldglass solutions lets users review performance against over 50 external workforce key performance indicators; access global market intelligence including rates, talent supply and demand, and time-to-hire trends; and track sustainability initiatives such as spend with diverse suppliers and worker health and safety, while observing cost overruns, worker fatigue, and on- and offboarding compliance.
“With SAP Business AI as the foundation of our intelligent products, customers can improve productivity and gain insights from their spend data no matter where it sits,” said Swaminathan. “Whether it is managing cost, mitigating risk or supporting scope three emission reduction, SAP empowers companies with the right solutions for agile and effective spend management and supply chain functions.”
The Internal Revenue Service says it has processing underway on some 400,000 claims for the Employee Retention Credit, representing about $10 billion of eligible claims.
Work on the claims for small businesses and others is ongoing as the agency continues to wade through claims from the complex — and at times misused — pandemic-era credit. A significant number of the ERC claims came in during what the IRS calls “a period of aggressive marketing” by promoters, leading to a large percentage of improper, ineligible claims.
“In recent weeks, the IRS has made substantial progress in separating eligible claims from the wave of ineligible claims that have come in,” said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel in a statement, “and we continue working to refine our models to identify more eligible claims.”
The claims being processed include eligible and ineligible claims, with most being processed for approval. Checks are being mailed for eligible claims with refunds.
The ERC program increasingly became the target of aggressive marketing well after the pandemic ended. Some promoter groups called the credit by another name, such as a grant, business stimulus payment, government relief or other names. The IRS is continuing to work denials of improper claims, intensifying audits and investigating potential fraud and abuse.
Last month, the agency opened a
Intuit launched an all-in-one accounting solution for mid-market businesses, LiveFlow raised $13.5 million to modernize accounting, a host of developments in AI, and other technology stories you may have missed in the last month and how they’ll impact your clients and your firm.
I’m 50 and have $250,000 in four retirement accounts. Should I consolidate them — and, if so, how?
SAP applies gen AI bot to spend management, business network solutions
Stocks making the biggest moves premarket: MS, CSCO, ASML
Are American progressives making themselves sad?
U.S. Beneficial Ownership Information Registry Now Accepting Reports
CPA licensure program off to ‘promising’ start
-
Personal Finance5 days agoInvestors face delays moving certain assets from TreasuryDirect
-
Stock News6 days agoBeleaguered Stellantis ousts CFO, other top execs in bid to ‘redouble’ its focus
-
Economics6 days agoInflation rate at 2.4%, topping expectations
-
Economics6 days agoHurricane Milton inundates Florida
-
Economics6 days agoThe Democrats will struggle to retain the Senate
-
Accounting5 days agoUsing AI will solve old drudgery, introduce new drudgery for accountants
-
Economics5 days agoProducer price index September 2024:
-
Personal Finance5 days agoOzempic drives up health-care costs, whether you can get it or not