BERKELEY – Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Ivanka Trump, advisor to the President, made a stop in Bayville to promote the tax bills that are currently moving through the House and Senate.
They discussed the general goals of the Republican tax plan in a discussion that was about an hour long. Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-3rd) hosted the two at an invitation-only talk at the Bayville Volunteer Fire Company.
“We need a simpler, fairer system for our country,” he said. It needs to go from a “high-rate, high-loophole system to a low-rate, low-loophole system.”
He asked a rhetorical question to the audience, to see how many of them have lawyers working for them to find loopholes to get out of paying taxes.
MacArthur said that if a family makes less than $24,000, they won’t have to fill out a lot of forms, just one small card.
However, there is a lot of work still left to do. The plans still have a lot of criticism, from both sides of the aisle.
“If I waited to vote ‘yes’ for a perfect bill, I’d never vote,” he said.
Mnuchin said he expects the House version of the tax plan to pass this week, and the Senate plan to pass after Thanksgiving. After that, the lawmakers need to hammer out the strengths and weaknesses of both bills to get a consensus.
“The code has become so complex,” Ivanka Trump said. “Simplifications ultimately democratizes the tax code.”
