BUSINESSMEN REACTED swiftly when a leading Republican lawmaker unveiled a proposed tax overhaul on February 26th. Advertisers moaned that it would “stifle economic activity”. Oil companies saw “serious flaws”. Estate agents were “extremely disappointed”.

This merely served to confirm that Dave Camp, chairman of the tax-writing committee in the House of Representatives, had done what he set out to do: lower tax rates and broaden the tax base by attacking the countless preferences that leak $1 trillion in revenue a year and make compliance a nightmare.

The plan, three years in the making, would slash the top corporate tax rate—at 35%, the highest in the OECD—to 25%, and pay for it by shrinking tax breaks. The biggest savings come from slowing the rate at which business can depreciate capital equipment, and from eliminating the special break for domestic manufacturing.

Mr Camp would shift America to a “territorial” system, meaning multinationals would no longer owe American taxes on the bulk of their foreign-owned profits. The practical impact would be small, since corporations can now avoid such taxes by leaving those profits abroad. The hope is that the lower tax rate would encourage business to keep operations and offices in America. He would also penalise too-big-to-fail banks with a 0.035% tax on assets in excess of $500 billion.

There are now seven tax rates for individuals, which range from 10% to 39.6%. Mr Camp would reduce them to just two: 10% and 25%. This is deceptive, however: he would also impose a 10% “surtax” on families earning more than $450,000, so their top rate drops only to 35%. He also scraps the hare-brained alternative minimum tax, a parallel tax that ensnares a large and growing chunk of the upper middle class. But state and local taxes could no longer be deducted from federal tax, and nor could interest on mortgages over $500,000 (the present cut-off is $1m). Both these breaks most benefit the rich.

Mr Camp would convert the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which adds a dollop of cash to the pay-cheques of the working poor, to a payroll-tax rebate. This would significantly reduce the generosity of the credit, which Mr Camp justifies by asserting that the EITC is inefficient and riddled with fraud, a common conservative complaint. It is, nonetheless, a strange target; Republicans generally like the EITC, since it encourages people to work.

The nonpartisan joint committee on taxation reckons Mr Camp’s plan favours neither rich nor poor relative to the current system. It also thinks the plan, by boosting work incentives and take-home pay (and thus consumption), would leave the economy between 0.1% and 1.6% larger, permanently. More’s the pity, then, that the bill’s political prospects are grim. Democrats have insisted that tax reform must raise money to reduce the deficit or fund their priorities; Republicans are equally insistent that tax reform must not raise new revenue. With little chance of the bill becoming law, Republicans see no point in antagonising so many vocal constituencies by putting it to a vote in an election year.