CBS News
Trump wants to make auto loan interest tax-deductible. It would mostly help the rich., experts say.
Donald Trump is now pitching a new tax cut that, on the face of it, would seem to benefit almost every American who owns a car.
The former president on Thursday proposed making interest on auto loans tax-deductible, an idea that is similar to the mortgage interest deduction, which allows some homeowners to reduce their taxable income by the amount of money they pay in mortgage interest each year.
Since it was introduced more than a century ago, the mortgage interest deduction has helped boost homeownership in the U.S. by making real estate purchases more affordable to families — a theme that Trump echoed in his proposal to extend the idea to car purchases. Americans owe about $1.63 trillion in auto loans, making it the second-largest category of debt after home loans, according to Federal Reserve data.
“We’re going to make it fully deductible, the interest payments, that’s going to revolutionize your industry,” Trump said Thursday during a nearly two-hour speech at the Detroit Economic Club. “This will stimulate massive domestic auto production and make car ownership dramatically more affordable for millions and millions of working American families.”
While Trump didn’t disclose details about how the plan would be implemented, tax experts say it would likely provide the most benefits to wealthy Americans while offering little aid to those who need it most — low-income workers.
If the plan mirrored the mortgage interest deduction, car owners would need to itemize their borrowing costs — making it a tax benefit that would mainly help high-income Americans, tax experts said. Ironically, that’s due to Trump’s Tax Cuts & Jobs Act, which greatly expanded the standard deduction starting in 2018, which in turn limited write-offs for millions of low- and middle-income Americans.
Currently, only about 1 in 10 taxpayers itemize, the majority of whom are high-income earners. For instance, more than 60% of people earning over $500,000 itemize, versus 4% of those earning between $30,000 to $50,000, according to the Tax Policy Center.
“If he thought there was a reason to subsidize car loan interest payments, this wouldn’t be the way to help people who need help paying for their car loans,” Leonard Burman, an economist at Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, told CBS MoneyWatch. “The people you would want to help are low-income people who need a car to get to a job, and this policy wouldn’t help them at all.”
The Trump campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Higher income, higher benefits
Even if the deduction was above-the-line, or a deduction that reduced a taxpayer’s gross income and didn’t need to be itemized — such as retirement contributions or health savings account deductions — it would still help higher-income Americans more than low-income workers, noted Erica York, senior economist at the Tax Foundation.
“In that case, anyone with auto loan interest could deduct that when they are filing their tax return,” York told CBS MoneyWatch. “The benefit the taxpayer would see depends on what marginal rate they pay on their income.”
For instance, someone in the 10% marginal tax bracket would receive a 10-cent deduction for every $1 in income, while those in the top 37% bracket would get 37 cents deducted on every dollar.
“The higher the tax rate, the higher the benefit,” she noted.
Billions in costs
An auto interest deduction would also come at a large cost to the federal government, likely to the tune of billions each year, tax experts told CBS MoneyWatch. Burman said his back-of-the envelope calculation, based on current interest rates and the size of the auto loan market, is “almost $6 billion per year in income tax reductions.”
At the same time, Trump has proposed multiple other tax reductions in recent weeks, ranging from getting rid of taxes on tipped income to erasing income taxes on Social Security benefits. The cost of footing the bill for all those proposals could cost as much as $9 trillion over the next decade, according to a September 20 analysis from TD Cowen analyst Jaret Seiberg.
Already, the U.S. deficit is projected to hit $1.9 trillion in fiscal year 2024. Trump’s proposals could increase the deficit by $6.9 trillion over the next decade, the Penn Wharton Budget Model told CBS MoneyWatch last month. Proposals from Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s rival in the November election, would also add to the deficit, but at a smaller $1.2 trillion over the next decade, according to Penn Wharton.
“We are running enormous public debt, and there is no public policy rationale for exempting car loan interest payments from tax,” Burman noted.
CBS News
Suspect detained in killing of Gen. Igor Kirillov, head of Russia’s biological, chemical forces in Moscow blast
Moscow — Russia’s security service said Wednesday that it has detained a suspect in the killing of a senior general in Moscow.
The suspect was described as an Uzbek citizen recruited by Ukrainian intelligence services.
Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, didn’t name the suspect, but said he was born in 1995. According to an FSB statement, the suspect said he was recruited by Ukrainian special services.
Ukrainian security sources had told CBS News Monday that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) killed Kirillov in a special operation. The claim couldn’t be independently verified, but Russian officials quickly vowed to take revenge against Ukraine’s leaders.
Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov was killed Tuesday by a bomb hidden in a scooter outside his apartment building in Moscow, a day after Ukraine’s security service leveled criminal charges against him. His assistant also died in the attack. A Ukrainian official said the service carried out the attack.
The FSB said the suspect had been promised a reward of $100,000 and permission to move to a European Union country in exchange for killing Kirillov.
The agency stated that, acting on instructions from Ukraine, the suspect traveled to Moscow, where he picked up a homemade explosive device. He then placed the device on an electric scooter and parked it at the entrance to the residential building where Kirillov lived.
The suspect then rented a car to monitor the location and set up a camera that livestreamed footage from the scene to his handlers in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Once Kirillov was seen leaving the building, the suspect detonated the bomb.
According to the FSB’s statement, the suspect faces “a sentence of up to life imprisonment.”
Kirillov, 54, was the chief of the military’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces and was under sanctions from several countries, including the U.K. and Canada, for his actions in Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine. On Monday, Ukraine’s Security Service, or SBU, opened a criminal investigation against him, accusing him of directing the use of banned chemical weapons.
Russia has denied using any chemical weapons in Ukraine and, in turn, has accused Kyiv of using toxic agents in combat.
Kirillov, who took his current job in 2017, was one of the most high-profile figures to level those accusations. He held numerous briefings to accuse the Ukrainian military of using toxic agents and planning to launch attacks with radioactive substances – claims that Ukraine and its Western allies rejected as propaganda.
The bomb used in Tuesday’s attack was triggered remotely, according to Russian news reports. Images from the scene showed shattered windows and scorched brickwork.
Russia’s top state investigative agency said it’s looking into Kirillov’s death as a case of terrorism, and officials in Moscow vowed to punish Ukraine.
CBS News
Indiana conducts first execution in 15 years, puts quadruple killer to death
Michigan City, Indiana — An Indiana man convicted of killing four people including his brother and his sister’s fiancé decades ago was put to death Wednesday, without any independent witness, marking the state’s first execution in 15 years.
Joseph Corcoran, 49, was pronounced dead at 12:44 a.m. CST at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, Indiana, the Indiana Department of Correction said in a statement. CBS Indianapolis affiliate WTTV reports that officials said the execution process started just after midnight.
Corcoran was scheduled to be executed with the powerful sedative pentobarbital, but the state agency’s statement did not mention that drug. Corcoran’s execution was the 24th in the U.S. this year.
According to WTTV, the statement said Corcoran told officials his last words were, “Not really. Let’s get this over with.”
He was convicted in the July 1997 shootings of his brother, 30-year-old James Corcoran, his sister’s fiancé, 32-year-old Robert Scott Turner, and two other men, Timothy G. Bricker, 30, and Douglas A. Stillwell, 30.
According to court records, before Corcoran fatally shot the four victims he was under stress because the forthcoming marriage of his sister to Turner would necessitate moving out of the Fort Wayne, Indiana, home he shared with his brother and sister.
While jailed for those killings, Corcoran reportedly bragged about fatally shooting his parents in 1992 in northern Indiana’s Steuben County. He was charged in their killings but acquitted.
Last summer, Gov. Eric Holcomb announced plans to resume state executions following a yearslong hiatus marked by a scarcity of lethal injection drugs nationwide.
The state provided limited details about the execution process, and no media witnesses were permitted under state law.
Indiana and Wyoming are the only two states that do not allow members of the media to witness state executions, according to a recent report by the Death Penalty Information Center.
Corcoran’s attorneys had fought his death penalty sentence for years, arguing he was severely mentally ill, which affected his ability to understand and make decisions. This month, his attorneys asked the Indiana Supreme Court to stop his execution but the request was denied.
Corcoran exhausted his federal appeals in 2016. But his attorneys asked the U.S. District Court of Northern Indiana last week to stop his execution and hold a hearing to decide if it would be unconstitutional because Corcoran has a serious mental illness. The court declined to intervene Friday, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit did the same Tuesday.
Corcoran’s attorneys then asked the U.S. Supreme Court issue an emergency order halting his execution, but the high court denied their request for a stay late Tuesday, ending Corcoran’s options with the courts.
His sole remaining hope then became Holcomb, who could have commuted Corcoran’s death sentence. But that commutation never came and the execution proceeded as scheduled.
WTTV says Holcomb issued a statement saying Corcoran’s case “has been reviewed repeatedly over the last 25 years – including 7 times by the Indiana Supreme Court and 3 times by the U.S. Supreme Court, the most recent of which was tonight. His sentence has never been overturned and was carried out as ordered by the court.”
Indiana’s last state execution was in 2009 when Matthew Wrinkles was put to death for killing his wife, her brother and sister-in-law in 1994.
Since then, 13 executions were carried out in Indiana, but those were initiated and performed by federal officials in 2020 and 2021 at a federal prison in Terre Haute.
State officials have said they couldn’t continue executions because a combination of drugs used in lethal injections had become unavailable.
For years, there has been a shortage across the country because pharmaceutical companies have refused to sell their products for that purpose. That’s pushed states, including Indiana, to turn to compounding pharmacies, which manufacture drugs specifically for a client. Some use more accessible drugs such as the sedatives pentobarbital or midazolam, both of which, critics say, can cause intense pain.
Religious groups, disability rights advocates and others have opposed his execution. About a dozen people, some holding candles, held a vigil late Tuesday to pray outside the prison, which is surrounded by barbed wire fences in a residential area about 60 miles east of Chicago.
“We can build a society without giving governmental authorities the right to execute their own citizens,” said Bishop Robert McClory of the Diocese of Gary, who led the prayers.
Other death penalty opponents also demonstrated outside the prison Tuesday night, some holding signs that read “Execution Is Not The Solution” and “Remember The Victims But Not With More Killing.”
“There is no need and no benefit from this execution. It’s all show,” said Abraham Borowitz, director of Death Penalty Action, his organization that protests every execution in the U.S.
Prison officials said in a brief statement Tuesday evening that Corcoran “requested Ben & Jerry’s ice cream for his last meal.”
Corcoran said farewell late Tuesday to relatives, including his wife, Tahina Corcoran, who told reporters outside the prison that they discussed their faith and their memories, including attending high school together. She reiterated her request for Indiana’s governor to commute her husband’s death sentence.
Tahina Corcoran said her husband is “very mentally ill” and she didn’t think he fully grasped what was happening to him.
“He is in shock. He doesn’t understand,” she said.
CBS News
1 killed, 9 injured in shooting, fiery crash in Baltimore suburb of Towson, police say
BALTIMORE — One person was killed and nine others injured in a shooting and fiery crash in the Baltimore suburb of Towson Tuesday night, authorities said.
Law enforcement responded at around 7:15 p.m. in the 8500 block of Loch Raven Boulevard, Baltimore County Police Chief Robert McCullough said in a news briefing.
“It appears to be a mass shooting incident,” McCullough told reporters. “We have multiple persons who were shot. Right now, we are determining the circumstances and the conditions in this case.”
The first arriving officer found a vehicle on its side in flames near a funeral home, McCullough said, and then several gunshot victims were found in the area.
“There appears to be some type of incident that led to the vehicle crashing and catching on fire,” McCollough said. “Investigators are looking into the circumstances leading up to that.”
The name of the person killed and the manner of death was not released, nor were the conditions of the nine people injured. McCollough did not specify how many of the nine people injured were gunshot victims.
At this time, investigators believe this was an isolated and targeted incident, with no further threat to the community, he added. It’s unclear if any suspects have been arrested. There was no word on a possible motive.
“We will leave no stone unturned and we will dedicate every resource to this,” McCullough said. “We don’t generally see incidents like this in our community in Baltimore County. I assure you as your police chief that we will put all resources toward trying to clear this case.”
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was at the scene assisting police, as was the Baltimore County Fire Department.
“This is an incident that is shocking, particularly for those of us in Baltimore County,” said Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski. “These types of incidents are unheard of here, so it really shocks the conscience. However, we want our residents to know that we are, as always, fully committed to ensuring that both our fire and police departments have the full support and all the resources they need from the Baltimore County government to ensure that they bring this investigation to a conclusion.”
Anyone with information is asked to call Baltimore County Police at 410-887-4636.