Economics: Breaking down the presidential candidates' tax plans

News 12 Long Island took a look at whether the economic policies of the presidential candidates -- Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton -- will help or hurt the Island. Both candidates

News 12 Staff

Oct 12, 2016, 2:22 AM

Updated 2,993 days ago

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News 12 Long Island took a look at whether the economic policies of the presidential candidates -- Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton -- will help or hurt the Island.
Both candidates offer quite different tax plans, and economic analyst Dr. Martin Cantor says it is hard to tell which would benefit Long Islanders more.
"For Long Island, I think we'll probably do better under the Clinton plan," Cantor says. "However, it might be marginally better under the Trump plan. We won't know until people start filing their taxes."
Clinton wants the current $1,000 tax credit families receive for each child under the age of 4 doubled to $2,000. She also wants to raise taxes on the wealthy by implementing a 4 percent surcharge on people earning more than $5 million.
Trump's plan is a little more complicated. Currently, there are seven federal income tax brackets, and Trump wants to merge them into three brackets -- the lowest, 12 percent, the middle, 25 percent and the highest, 33 percent. Some people will be moved to the higher tax brackets and others could end in a lower bracket.
Under Trump's plan, the highest tax bracket would go from 39.6 percent to 33 percent, which would be paid by couples earning more than $225,000 a year.