Donald Trump's revised tax plan, compared against his initial proposal, would increase tax rates across all income levels. | AP Photo Economists revising Trump's plan could make more people pay taxes New details emerge about the revision requested by the presumptive Republican nominee.

Conservative economists Larry Kudlow and Steve Moore, tasked by Donald Trump’s campaign to revise his tax plan, have called their changes “tweaks” but what they submitted to the nonprofit Tax Foundation for a new deficit score amounts to a dramatic rewrite of Trump’s original plan.

The new plan, compared against Trump’s initial proposal, would increase tax rates across all income levels, dramatically reduce the number of people who would pay no income taxes at all and impose a new cap on charitable deductions for the wealthy. It was described to POLITICO by Tax Foundation analyst Alan Cole.


Trump himself has not yet approved the revisions being drafted by Kudlow, a CNBC host, and Moore, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, but his campaign requested that the economists produce a revision of the tax plan he first unveiled last September.

Kudlow previously told POLITICO that the Tax Foundation gave the new package a 10-year deficit score of $3.8 trillion, down from the initial $10 trillion estimate for Trump’s first plan. Cole confirmed those figures, while providing new details of the Kudlow-Moore plan that netted the big reduction.

In Trump’s original plan, he set three tax rates: 10 percent, 20 percent and 25 percent. (For perspective, the current top rate is 39.6 percent.)

In the Kudlow-Moore draft, those would all rise, according to Cole, to 15 percent, 25 percent and 28 percent. Kudlow had previously only described raising the top rate, which Trump himself has signaled publicly he is open to.

In addition, Trump’s original plan required no income tax payments from individuals earning less than $25,000 and married couples earning below $50,000. Those thresholds under the Kudlow-Moore plan would drop to $10,000 and $20,000, according to Cole.

Plus, Cole said, the Kudlow-Moore draft would impose a new cap on itemizable deductions, such as charitable contributions and mortgage interest, at $25,000 for individuals and $50,000 for married couples.

Kudlow had previously outlined the other changes, which include allowing businesses to itemize certain expenses and reducing the top rate in Trump’s original plan on capital gains from 20 percent to 15 percent.

Cole said the Kudlow-Moore plan he scored would add $3.8 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade using so-called “dynamic” scoring that includes projected economic growth. The 10-year deficit score not factoring in such growth is $6.7 trillion, Cole said.