Trump urged US House Speaker Johnson to raise top tax rate, sources say

By David Morgan and Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump privately urged House Speaker Mike Johnson during a telephone telephone connected Wednesday to rise the taxation complaint connected the wealthiest Americans and adjacent the carried involvement loophole for Wall Street investors, 2 radical acquainted with the speech said connected Thursday.

Trump and Johnson spoke arsenic the Republican-controlled House of Representatives struggles to hold connected a way guardant connected extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act for businesses and individuals, portion eliminating taxes connected extremity income, overtime wage and Social Security benefits, without adding excessively overmuch to the nation's $36 trillion debt.

Republicans are aiming to implicit Trump's "one large beauteous bill" by precocious adjacent week and walk it successful the House up of the May 26 U.S. Memorial Day holiday.

Trump is pushing to rise the apical taxation complaint from 37% to 39.6% for individuals earning $2.5 cardinal and higher oregon associated filers earning $5 million, with carve-outs for tiny businesses, according to 1 source.

"This volition assistance wage for monolithic mediate and working-class taxation cuts, and support Medicaid," a abstracted root said.

Republicans person been nether unit from the Trump's populist MAGA basal to rise taxes connected the wealthy. But Johnson and different apical Republicans person resisted an summation successful the apical taxation rate, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters past week that Trump had ruled retired the idea.

The existent legislative program calls for offsetting taxation cuts by reducing spending connected the Medicaid healthcare programme for lower-income Americans and nutrition enactment programs and by eliminating fashionable biology taxation credits, changes opposed by Republican centrists.

"The spending simplification broadside of this equation has been the astir challenging, which is simply a bittersweet commentary connected my enactment and my conference. But it's the reality," House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington told reporters.

Arrington and different House Republicans said nonaccomplishment to execute $2 trillion successful spending cuts implicit a decennary would jeopardize Trump's hopes of making his 2017 taxation cuts permanent. A higher taxation complaint connected the affluent could supply added revenues to compensate for cuts elsewhere.

Representative Jason Smith, who chairs the tax-writing House Ways & Means Committee, said successful a caller interrogation that his sheet could adjacent taxation loopholes that payment the affluent successful the upcoming bill.

(Reporting by David Morgan, Steve Holland and Jasper Ward; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)