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Top White House adviser Steve Bannon is pushing for tax reform to include a new 44 percent top marginal tax rate, hitting people who earn more than $5 million a year, with the revenue paying for tax cuts for the rest, The Intercept reported yesterday. The top rate is now 39.6 percent and most Republicans have been planning to lower it significantly as part of tax reform. The plan Trump put out previously would have only three brackets, with the top one brought down to 35 percent. Raising taxes on the very rich has been a rare policy that President Donald Trump has publicly espoused throughout much of his life. The hike on the very rich would face stiff opposition from congressional Republicans, but find favor with Democrats. According to IRS data, just over 43,000 people filed tax returns for the year 2014 claiming income of at least $5 million, accounting for $600 billion in taxes, or 8.8 percent of the total taxes paid. The new rate would only apply to about a third of that money, as the 44 percent kicks in at the $5 million level. Still, the hike would pull in around $18 billion per year, or $180 billion over 10 years.

Targeting government regulations, the Republican-led House on voted to nullify a rule that would let consumers join together to sue their banks or credit card companies rather than use an arbitrator to resolve a dispute, The Associated Press reported yesterday. The repeal resolution passed by a vote of 231-190. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized the rule just two weeks ago. It bans most type of mandatory arbitration clauses, which are often found in the fine print of contracts governing the terms of millions of credit card and checking accounts. Republican lawmakers, cheered on by the banking sector and other leading business groups, wasted no time seeking to undo the rule before it goes into effect next year. They'll succeed if they can get a simple majority of both chambers of Congress to approve the legislation and President Donald Trump to sign it. The numbers are likely on their side, just as they were earlier this year when Republicans led efforts to upend 14 Obama-era rules. GOP lawmakers described the rule as a bad deal for consumers but a big win for trial lawyers. They said the average payout for participants in a class-action lawsuit was just $32 in the financial disputes the consumer bureau studied. "How is that pro-consumer?" asked Rep. Keith Rothfus (R-Pa.). Meanwhile, Rothfus said the average payout for the attorneys in the class-action cases amounted to nearly $1 million. Democratic lawmakers fought to keep the rule. They said they're not opposed to arbitration. It just shouldn't be the only option consumers have.

On the day the Senate moved on long-promised health-care legislation, President Donald Trump signaled his next priority: overhauling the tax code to push corporate rates down and give middle-class taxpayers a break, even if it means some of the wealthiest pay more, The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. “The people I care most about are the middle-income people in this country, who have gotten screwed,” President Trump said, reiterating that he wants to bring down the corporate tax rate to 15 percent. “And if there’s upward revision it’s going to be on high-income people.” Sitting behind his desk in the Oval Office, President Trump hopscotched across a variety of policy and personnel topics over the course of the 45-minute interview. The president said his front-runners to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve board of governors early next year would be the incumbent, Janet Yellen, and Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council. Turning to taxes, he echoed some of the populist themes from his presidential campaign. He described twin imperatives in overhauling the tax structure: boosting economic growth and easing the tax burden on middle-class families. “I have wealthy friends that say to me, ‘I don’t mind paying more tax,’” the president said. He added that “we have to take care of middle-income people in this country. They built the country. They started this whole beautiful thing that we have. And we have to take care of them. And people have not taken care of them, and we’re going to.” President Trump’s aides are working with top Republican lawmakers on a proposal that would bring about the first major rewrite of the tax code in 30 years. President Trump and White House officials have been vague on significant middle-class provisions, such as the personal exemption, while promising specific benefits for high-income households such as the repeal of the estate tax and alternative minimum tax.