Declaring himself "the king of the tax code," Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump promised Friday to soon unleash his plan to overhaul the tax system, a proposal he says will be hated by people at hedge funds but loved by "pretty much everybody else," reported the Associated Press.
"The concept of hedge funds - now these are guys, they don't really build anything, they shuffle paper, they go back and forth, they live beautifully and so do I and so do you and so do all of us, OK?" Trump said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "When you pay 14 percent, Joe, I don't know who you're talking about - I don't know any of them that pay 14 percent," Trump added, according to The Washington Times.
"There are things that hedge funds do, hedge fund guys do. They make a tremendous amount of money and they don't pay, and what I want to do is I want to simplify the tax code, and I'm going to be coming out over the next month with I think a really - look, nobody knows the tax code better than I do, OK?" said Trump, who currently dominates the rest of the GOP presidential field in the polls.
"I know it better. I'm the king of the tax code," he said. "And I'm going to come out with a plan, a simplification, a plan getting rid of some of the deductions, which are ridiculous and complicated."
Trump's plan to raise taxes on the extremely rich, including himself, should be released in the next four weeks, he said. It's a break from the rest of the Republican field and isn't likely to sit well with the party's base, but the billionaire mogul said it has to be done, as it's too unfair to middle-class Americans.
"So we are going to simply the tax code, take away some of the deductions, and hedge fund guys have to pay up," he said, according to the Times. "Now, I'm going to lower taxes, but these hedge fund guys are making a lot of money. I mean, I [can] tell you I have friends that laugh about how little they pay, and it's not fair to the middle class, and the middle income people and the middle class. We're destroying that and, you know, that's what built this country, and we are destroying the middle class in this country."
"So I will have a plan. The hedge fund guys won't be happy, but pretty much everybody else is [going to] love it," said Trump.
Trump added that those hedge fund guys are also huge supporters of Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton along with Trump's GOP rival former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
"I know the hedge fund guys, as you know, very well - I probably know all of 'em one way or the other, and big supporters of Hillary Clinton, big supporters of Jeb Bush," he said. "They've given Jeb Bush millions because they're going to keep it going the same way, and they've given [to] Hillary Clinton."
"You know, with all the talk with Hillary about Wall Street - I mean, they're all supporting her. It's a joke, and it's a joke that she can get away with it," Mr. Trump said.
