Stephen Colbert Has a Pitch-Perfect Analogy for Trump's Horrifying Tax Plan
The Trump administration's tax plan, branded "the biggest tax cut in history," has drawn skeptics from both sides of the aisle.Â
"That plan? Never release Trump's taxes," Stephen Colbert joked on Wednesday's "Late Show." Colbert continued, "To explain the plan, Trump sent out his team of workin' class, blue collar former Goldman Sachs executives, [Chief Economic Adviser] Gary Cohn and [Treasury Secretary] Steven Mnuchin."
Cohn explained that the administration would be simplifying the tax code by reducing the number of brackets from seven to three: 10 percent, 25 percent and 35 percent.
"It's really going to simplify your office pool during Tax Madness," quipped Colbert. "Look at the brackets: It's poor versus middle class, and rich versus nobody, because they win."
"Now, the Trump administration has a very strong rationale for simplifying the tax code," continued Colbert, before rolling a clip of Cohn's dubious defense of the plan.
"In 1935, we had a one-page tax form consisting of 34 lines with two pages of instructions. Today, the basic form has 79 lines and 211 pages of instructions," Cohn explained.Â
"1935 was the height of the Great Depression," offered Colbert. "So, the two-page form was just 'Page 1: Do you have money?' And Page 2 was so you would have something to eat."
And Trump's proposal?
"One page of double-spaced bullet points with some hefty margins," the "Late Show" host noted. "I'm going to say it's not really confidence-building when your tax reform plan is half as long as the instructions to set up a Vitamix."
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