Trump wants to just stop payroll taxes on his own before the election….

Since the economy went into decline during the pandemic, Trump has been advocating a “payroll tax holiday” but has gotten little interest from either the House or the Senate. Trump said Monday that he was considering taking some actions on his own to circumvent Congress, where top Democrats are at loggerheads with the White House over a new relief package.

“I have a lot of powers with respect to executive orders, and we’re looking at that very seriously right now,” Trump said, although he wasn’t specific on whether he meant just extending the temporary moratorium on evictions or a broader set of actions.

Economists complain that suspending employees’ 7.65 percent payroll tax contribution is a slow way to get money into peoples’ hands — certainly much slower than the tax rebates approved in the $2 trillion March aid law and proposed by both chambers for the next round of relief.

Those $1,200 payments were distributed in lump sums, while payroll tax cuts accrue slowly in each paycheck. Workers currently pay 6.2 percent on wages up to the first $137,700 in 2020 to finance Social Security, plus another 1.45 percent on all wages that goes into Medicare’s hospital trust fund. Upper-income workers pay another 0.9 percent Medicare tax on earnings above $200,000.

Moore, a conservative economist, wrote the opinion piece along with Phil Kerpen, president of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. Moore is a co-founder of the committee, which promotes a flat tax, less federal spending and less regulation. One of the other co-founders is conservative economist Arthur Laffer.

Moore and Kerpen wrote that they’d tailor the payroll tax suspension to workers making $75,000 and below, which is the same threshold for individuals to receive the maximum tax rebate in the March law and current proposals. But a payroll tax cut would do little for those who have lost their jobs or who are retired.

The authors pointed to Section 7508(a) of the tax code as the president’s authority for suspending payroll tax collections. They note that this section was cited by the IRS when it postponed filing deadlines from April 15 to July 15.

The order they cite postponed until July 15 the deadline for “filing Federal income tax returns and making Federal income tax payments due April 15.” However, the order went on to say it “does not apply with respect to any other type of Federal tax.”

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Another problem is what to do about any forgone revenue into the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. In the past when Congress enacted payroll tax cuts, lawmakers had appropriated general fund revenue to keep the trust funds whole….

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