The Trump Trade Dump – Why It’s Coming Soon

The Donald’s twitter-finger wasted no time Monday morning slinging another verbal dart into the bull (market). Even though the talking heads will likely deny it until the cows come home, too, the stock market is hovering at its current insanely over-valued levels owing to the fantasy of a big corporate rate cut.

But it’s not happening because the GOP can’t agree on a way to pay for it. Moreover, the $1.5 trillion deficit allowance in the Senate budget resolution won’t amount to a hill of beans when the tax writers get down to the lick log, as Senator Howard Baker used to say. More on that below.

But as an indicator of the level of desperation that exists backstage on Capitol Hill, consider the fact that Ways and Means Chairman Brady late last week was apparently even floating the idea of sharply paring 401(k) retirement plan deductions. The current annual maximums of $18,000 and $24,000 (for workers over 50) would be reduced to just $2,500.

While the so-called tax expenditure (revenue loss) for defined benefit retirement plans is estimated by the Treasury Department at $1.05 trillion over the next decade, this big number includes non-401(k) plans and the employer share of 401(k) plans that are not being targeted for reduction.

Accordingly, the employee share of the revenue loss attributable to 401( k) plans would amount to about $550 billion over the decade. But even that number vastly exaggerates the potential revenue pick-up that could be used as a “payfor” to fund the rate cuts and reforms.

That’s because in the most recent year there were 62.7 million active participants in 401(k) plans, who matched employer contributions at an average rate of $3,350 per participant. This means, in turn, that when you remove the high contributors from the average—what is left is a huge pool of participants who already contribute less than the $2,500 cap proposed by Brady and therefore would not be impacted.

So we estimate that the revenue gain from drastically reducing the deduction cap for the limited universe of high income/high contribution participants might amount to just one-third of the total tax expenditure or about $180 billion of the next decade.

Needless to say, that’s not very much when you are trying to finance a $6 trillion wish list. That is, the current best guess as to the gross revenue cost of the corporate rate reduction from 35% to 20%, the 25% pass-thru rate for sub-chapter S businesses and the individual income tax reforms including three brackets, doubling of the standard deduction and increased child care credits.

Besides that, the 401(k) deduction is not a true “loophole” but is actually just an interest-free loan from Uncle Sam. Eventually, workers must pay taxes when they drawdown these funds after retirement.

Yet even that deferment was too much for the Donald—to say nothing of the nation’s vast army of tax planners and stockbrokers who feed off 401(k) accounts. Before the Wall Street lobby machine even got into high gear, Twitter carried the coup de grace:

There will be NO change to your 401(k). This has always been a great and popular middle class tax break that works, and it stays!

The capitalized “no” part of it says all you need to know. The Brady plan was leaked to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal on Friday and pounced upon immediately thereafter by the Dems. It’s an insidious scheme to screw the average workers in order to fund big reductions for the 1% was their full-throated battle cry.

So by the time of the Donald’s 7:40 AM tweet, it was already DBA (dead before arrival).

We dwell on this episode because this was the last great white hope on the “payfor” front. That is, after the multi-trillion BAT (border adjustment tax) was deep-sixed months ago and the $1.3 trillion savings from eliminating SALT (state and local tax deduction) has gone into a near-terminal meltdown.