Making the individual side of the Trump tax cuts permanent likely would pay for itself, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin suggested Friday.
“I think we’ll have the growth to show we can afford that,” Mnuchin said in an interview with CNBC Friday afternoon.
He also said that the Trump administration favors permanence for the individual side of the tax overhaul package Trump signed in December. Republicans set the individual tax cuts to expire at the end of 2025 to pass them using a legislative maneuver that made it possible to avoid the Democratic filibuster but limited their maximum size.
Making the individual-side tax cuts permanent would add about $315 billion to the 10-year cost of the tax cuts, according to an earlier calculation from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
But Mnuchin suggested Friday that making the cuts permanent could increase economic growth, which could lead to higher tax revenue so that the cuts pay for themselves.
He said that he is in discussions with Congress about making the individual taxes permanent, but that doing so isn’t likely before the midterm elections.
The tax cuts include the lower rates on individual taxes as well as the doubled standard deduction.
The temporary policies also include tax breaks that were eliminated to pay for the new tax provisions, such as personal exemptions.
Of note, the individual provisions also include a major new tax provision that would cut taxes for businesses that aren’t C-corporations, businesses organized as sole proprietorships and partnerships whose income flows straight through to owners’ returns.
