ELECTION/TAXES/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Trump administration officials are divided over whether to give investors a big tax cut that would primarily benefit the rich before the 2020 election heats up in earnest. Republican senators and conservative anti-tax groups are increasingly pushing the administration to use executive authority to deliver a tax cut to investors on profits they earn when selling assets like stocks or bonds. Such a move would defy a legal opinion issued in 1992, under President George Bush, and add an estimated $100 billion to the already surging national debt. Supporters of the plan include Larry Kudlow, the director of President Trump’s National Economic Council, who is leading a White House task force examining the proposal. Mr. Kudlow is a longtime champion of the idea, which would provide a tax break on profits known as capital gains. But the move has skeptics, including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, whose department is bound by a 1992 opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel that determined the Treasury Department does not have the authority to index capital gains to inflation by regulation.”
–Alan Rappeport and Jim Tankersley, “Trump Administration Is Divided Over Tax Cut for Investors,” The New York Times online, July 30, 2019