Steve Bannon, the White House chief strategist under President Donald Trump, is rumored to be supportive of a tax hike on the nation's top earners. Carolyn Kaster/AP
White House chief strategist Steve Bannon appears to be running against the grain of President Donald Trump's tax-cut push, as the former Breitbart News executive reportedly is hoping for a top income tax bracket with a "4 in front of it."
Axios reports Bannon is angling for a tax hike on America's wealthiest citizens, who currently face a 39.6 percent federal tax burden.
The idea broadly fits into the populist ideology Bannon is said to embrace, as it reportedly would be used to offset tax cuts for middle- and working-class Americans. But it doesn't mesh particularly well with the strategy thus far pushed by Trump, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and senior Republican lawmakers.
Though a finalized tax plan has yet to be made public, Trump is said to be aiming for a business tax rate as low as 15 percent and a top personal tax rate of 35 percent.
The president also supports a Senate health care bill that in its initial version would repeal investment and Medicare taxes associated with former President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, though scrapping the investment tax appears likely to be revisited as Republican leaders push for the bill's passage.
Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, estimated last month that the legislation would raise the top 1 percent of households' after-tax incomes by 2 percent.
Despite health care's holdup on Capitol Hill, Mnuchin, Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Paul Ryan all have said in recent weeks they think tax reform can be finalized by the end of the year.
Sunday's Axios report also indicated Mnuchin and Gary Cohn, the former president of Goldman Sachs and current director of Trump's National Economic Council, are spearheading the tax efforts and that Cohn has indicated he thinks tax reform may be impossible to achieve if it isn't knocked out by the end of 2017.
Sources who know Cohn also have indicated he may step away from the White House if his tax reform push fails, Axios says.
Andrew Soergel is an Economy Reporter at U.S. News. You can connect with him on LinkedIn, follow him on Twitter or email him at asoergel@usnews.com.
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