Re: “Letter to the editor: Lower taxes, less regulation under Trump will help businesses, nation” (Dec. 6), by Nick Pappas:

Mr. Pappas is mistaken on several accounts. It is a frequent lie of the Trump team that U.S. corporations are taxed the highest in the world. According to the Tax Foundation’s 2017 report, while U.S. corporations are taxed high, it is not the highest (and many companies end up paying far less because of deductions and credits). As for “repatriating profits” and being double-taxed, if they weren’t trying to cheat, they wouldn’t be penalized.

Regulations, put forth by “various government agencies,” are done so not capriciously, as Mr. Pappas asserts, but to protect us. Environmental Protection Agency regulations protect our health by ensuring that corporations don’t poison the air we breathe and the water we drink.

Financial regulations by the Treasury, etc., protect our money from corporate greed, be it penalizing banks that take our money with exorbitant fees or over-risky investments, or blocking mergers that create real or effective monopolies, in order to protect consumer prices and new entrepreneurs.

And, finally, lowering the tax rate on anyone or anything does not result in repatriating money, creating jobs or reinvesting in the United States. It’s called “trickle-down economics,” and it has been proven to be fake, merely a way to convince people to give the wealthy a tax break.

The Republican tax plan is nothing but theft of wealth from the working class and poor by the already wealthy.

Jeffrey Kaplan

Biddeford

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