… Steve Bannon is pushing for tax reform to include a new 44 percent top marginal tax rate, hitting people who earn more than $5 million a year, with the revenue paying for tax cuts for the rest, according to three people who’ve spoken to him recently.
The top rate is now 39.6 percent and most Republicans have been planning to lower it significantly as part of tax reform. The plan Trump put out previously would have only three brackets, with the top one brought down to 35 percent.
… the hike would pull in around $18 billion per year, or $180 billion over 10 years.
This actually quite shrewd (from a purely-political point of view) — it would have a huge “solidarity effect”, while bringing in comparatively little revenue compared to what we need to balance the budget (3% a year at best, roughly).