Political Parties

As I explore political structures in our government another important thing to address would be parties and the role they play. Simply put, a political party is a group of like-minded voters that aim to support and eventually elect a candidate who will support their chosen policies. These policies can range from taxation to current foreign action. Our government is described as having a two-party system meaning that two major parties control the government. Obviously, there are other parties present and pushing their own candidates but none have the power or voter mass that both the Republican and Democrat parties have in our country. Like any system a two-party style has pros and cons, however, one advantage of having these parties is it allows the common voter to easily identify a possible candidate's agenda or stance.

Our current president Donald Trump, a candidate of the Republican party, recently signed in a massive tax overhaul that substantially changed the way corporate and individual taxes are based and rated. Most notably reducing the maximum corporate tax rate by 14% and changing the international tax regulations. The corporate regulations are permanent whereas individual tax regulations in the bill will be removed in 2025.

These regulations will have obviously affect the individual taxpayer but how big will that impact be? Based on projections in this graph using data from a 2014 survey we can see that the effect of the bill will not be equal to both red and blue states.

The new regulations in the tax legislation are likely to eliminate state and local tax deduction. This action will be more helpful to those in blue states where local and state taxes are traditionally higher than those in red states, or so it would seem. The Republican party made a last minute change to the bill surrounding property tax that could end up making upper-middle class families in these blue areas pay more. Of the 20 congressional districts that have the highest rate of returns eight of them had Republican representatives. The blue states displayed in this graph end up mostly having higher percentages of tax return shares.