Pete Ricketts Releases Detailed Tax Cut Plan

Pete Ricketts Releases Detailed Tax Cut Plan

Pete Ricketts has released a detailed plan to cut taxes. Ricketts' plan reduces taxes on all Nebraska families.

Pete's Tax Cut Plan addresses tax code inequity through common sense steps the federal government can take to relieve the tax burden on individuals and families: making President Bush's tax cuts permanent, fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax, increasing the Child Tax credit, and streamlining the tax code.

"My approach to tax cuts is simple: allow Nebraskans to keep more of the money they earn," said Ricketts. "That means lowering taxes and controlling government spending - which will be my top priority in the Senate."

"Nebraska values mean keeping more of the dollars we earn, encouraging personal responsibility and creating more jobs."

Pete's plan calls for the following steps:

1. Make the President's Tax Cuts Permanent. The President's tax cuts ensure that everyone who pays income taxes receives tax relief.

-Lower Marginal Tax Rates

-End the Marriage Penalty

-Increase the Child Tax Credit

-Lower Capital Gains and Dividends Taxes

-Eliminate the Death Tax

2. Fix the Alternative Minimum Tax

-The AMT was introduced by the Johnson Administration to prevent a small number of wealthy Americans from avoiding taxes with tax shelters. Its lack of adjustment for inflation means it increasingly affects the middle class.

-The current tax cuts that spare millions of middle-class taxpayers from the AMT are only good through 2006. After that, millions of Americans will be forced back into the unfair AMT system.

3. Streamline the Tax Code

-We must streamline the overly complicated tax code both to ensure greater compliance, and to reduce the drag that compliance places on our economy.

-Currently the tax code is 17,000 pages long and advice given out by the IRS is incorrect 35 percent of the time. Americans waste $140 billion complying with the tax code each year.

-Any changes to the tax code must continue to provide tax incentives for home ownership, college savings, savings for the future, a child-tax credit, and provide tax incentives that encourage individual responsibility, such as individual healthcare tax credits as an alternative to employer-based health insurance.

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