DeSantis facing calls to clarify tax plan ahead of second GOP debate

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is under pressure to provide more details regarding his tax plan after appearing to describe levies under President Joe Biden as “low.”

“Most of the candidates are out with a very good tax-cutting proposal, I’m waiting on DeSantis,” conservative anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist said. “He came out with a statement on taxes, which was he wants to defend our low tax rates. Really? Our tax rates are low?”

TRUMP LOOKING FORWARD TO 2024 GENERAL ELECTION, PAST THE PRIMARIES AND MAYBE 2020

“The top rate when [former President Ronald Reagan] left was 27%; it’s now like 37%,” Americans for Tax Reform’s founder and president told the Ruthless podcast last Tuesday of Biden’s top federal income tax bracket. “We’re going to defend 37?”

In response, DeSantis campaign press secretary Bryan Griffin underscored comments the governor made during an interview this month.

“There’s a new report out that former President Donald Trump and his advisers are discussing aggressive new tax cuts, if he were to win a second term. Do you have a plan on cutting taxes? What is it?” CBS host Norah O’Donnell asked.

“We are going to be rolling out our tax plan,” DeSantis replied. “We’re going to have low, transparent, simple rates. We’re not going to raise taxes.”

“The government’s already taking in a higher percentage of [gross domestic product] than at any time, I think, since the Second World War,” he said. “We don’t have a taxing problem; we have a spending problem, and we will have a very pro-growth tax policy.”

DeSantis published his broader economic plan last month as part of a policy push coinciding with his campaign’s self-described summer “reload” as concerns about polling and fundraising mounted. The third item on the governor’s economic agenda is creating 3% GDP growth by “incentivizing investment, eliminating bureaucracy and red tape,” in addition to “keeping taxes low.”

Former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) have also released economic plans before this Wednesday’s debate at the Reagan Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, California. Trump has not specified possible new tax individual and corporate rates, but has spoken publicly about using tariffs to decrease producer levies.

“What we want to do is strengthen the middle class,” Haley told Fox Business last week. “Let’s cut their income taxes and condense the brackets of the income taxes so they can get more money.”

“Let’s eliminate the federal gas and diesel tax so that inflation is not burdening them so much,” she said. “Let’s focus on getting rid of any distorted tax rules that play favorites, like the state and local tax deduction, which it only takes from low-tax states, but it gives to the wealthy in big-tax states. Let’s make sure we put those small business tax cuts and make them permanent.”

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Scott has similarly proposed making “personal and family tax cuts permanent,” as well as repealing “the Death Tax to save family farms.”

“Eliminate the Factory Tax and supercharge American manufacturing — by rewarding American businesses that build, not foreign companies that borrow,” he wrote.