President Trump on Wednesday plans to call for a significant increase in the standard deduction people can claim on their tax returns, potentially putting thousands of dollars each year into the pockets of tens of millions of Americans, according to two people briefed on the plan.

The change is one of several major revisions to the federal tax code that the White House will propose when it provides an outline of the tax-overhaul pitch Trump will make to Congress and the American people as he nears his 100th day in office.

Trump will call for a sharp reduction in the corporate tax rate, from 35 percent to 15 percent. He will also propose lowering the tax rate for millions of small businesses that now file their tax returns under the individual tax code, two people familiar with the plan said.

These companies, often referred to as “pass throughs” or S corporations, would be subject to the 15 percent rate proposed for corporations. Many pass throughs are small, family-owned businesses. But they can also be large — such as parts of Trump’s own real estate empire or law firms with partners who earn more than a million dollars annually. The White House is expected to pursue safeguards to ensure that companies like law firms can’t take advantage of this new tax rate and allow their highly paid partners to pay much lower tax bills.

Trump’s proposed tax changes will not all be rolled out Wednesday. White House officials are also working to develop an expanded Child and Dependent Care Credit, which they hope would benefit low- and middle-income families facing substantial burdens in paying for child care. Trump had touted a tax measure for child care during the campaign, but it was criticized as not significantly benefiting families of modest means.

White House officials think these changes will give Americans and companies more money to spend, expand the economy and create more jobs.

The existing standard deduction Americans can claim is $6,300 for individuals and $12,600 for married couples filing jointly. The precise level of Trump’s new proposal could not be ascertained, but it was significantly higher, the two people said, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plan has not yet been made public.

During the campaign, Trump proposed raising the standard deduction to $15,000 for individuals and $30,000 for families.

Like other parts of Trump’s tax proposal, an increase in the standard deduction would lead to a large loss of government revenue.

A standard deduction works like this: If a couple filing jointly earns $70,000, they deduct $12,600 from their income, adjusting their income to $57,400. They then would pay taxes on the $57,400 in income, not the $70,000 they earned. Increasing the standard deduction would reduce their taxable income, ensuring that they can keep more of their money. A taxpayer who claims the standard deduction cannot also itemize deductions for items such as mortgage interest or charitable giving. But if the standard deduction is large enough, many would be likely to bypass the itemized deduction.

The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimated last year that if Trump raised the standard deduction as much as he proposed during the campaign, about 27 million of the 45 million tax filers who itemized their tax breaks in 2017 would instead opt to take the standardized deduction, creating a much simpler process.

This would also match one of the goals outlined by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. He has said that filing taxes has become too complicated for many Americans and that his goal would be for many Americans to be able to file their taxes on a “large postcard.”

White House officials including Vice President Pence also met late Tuesday with congressional leaders and said they wanted to pass a tax-code overhaul through a process known as “reconciliation,” a person familiar with the meeting said, which means they could achieve the changes with only Republican votes.

They also said they were going to push for steep cuts in tax rates but would be willing to raise some new revenue with other changes to the tax code. The White House on Wednesday is expected to reiterate this openness to new revenue without getting into specifics of which tax changes it would seek, as that could create a fierce corporate blowback based on which exemptions could be cut.

Congressional Republicans praised President Trump’s ambitious effort to overhaul the tax code and slash corporate income tax rates to 15 percent.

But they cautioned that some parts of the plan might go too far, illustrating the challenges the president continues to face in his own party as he seeks political support for one of his top domestic priorities.

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.), who head Congress’s tax-writing panels, said they were open to Trump’s plan to push forward with sharp cuts in the rates that businesses pay but suggested that changes might be needed.

“I think the bolder the better in tax reform,” said Brady, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee. “I’m excited that the president is going for a very ambitious tax plan.”

Hatch, meanwhile, said the White House appears to be “stuck on” the idea that certain small businesses, known as S corporations, should have their tax rates lowered to 15 percent, just like large businesses. S corporations pay the same tax rates that individuals and families pay, with a top rate of close to 40 percent.

“I’m open to good ideas,” Hatch said. “The question is: Is that a good idea.”

Meanwhile, Democrats denounced the 15 percent corporate tax rate and criticized Mnuchin, who said that faster economic growth would generate enough new tax revenue to compensate for the corporate rate cuts.

Asked whether the 15 percent target was workable, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) told reporters: “It is, if you want to blow a hole in the federal budget and cut a whole lot of things like Meals on Wheels and Lake Erie restoration and then lie about the growth rate of the economy.”

He said that the Trump administration would have to do something “huge” such as scrapping mortgage interest deductions, adopting a border adjustment tax or relying on “outrageously inaccurate projections.”

The Trump tax package has won the support of most of the business community, but divisions remain.

The biggest winners from the corporate tax cut would include companies in industries such as retailing, construction and services that have had trouble taking advantage of the loopholes in the existing tax code.

The list of losers from tax reform could include technology companies, domestic oil and gas drillers, utilities and pharmaceutical firms that have been adept at playing the current system by using loopholes to deduct interest payments, expense their equipment and research, and transfer profits to foreign jurisdictions with lower tax rates. Under the Trump plan, many of those tax breaks would be eliminated in return for lowering the rate.

“Retail companies are the ones who pay closest to the rate of 35 percent,” said Len Burman, a fellow and tax expert at the Urban Institute. “They can’t ship their profits overseas. They can’t take advantage of the research and experimentation credit.”

A study of 2016 data for all profitable publicly listed companies by Aswath Damodaran, a finance professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, showed that U.S. firms pay vastly different income tax rates.

On average, engineering and construction firms, food wholesalers and publishers paid about 34 percent. At the other end, oil and natural gas companies paid 7 to 8 percent on average.

“The U.S. tax code is filled with all kinds of ornaments” that help the oil and gas industry, said Damodaran. A decades-old depletion allowance, for example, allows companies to deduct money as a natural resource is produced and sold. This comes on top of other deductions for various expenses.

A Treasury Department study last year based on tax returns for 2007-2011 showed that debt-laden utilities paid only 10 percent in taxes, while construction firms and retailers paid 27 percent.“Retailers pay a higher effective tax rate of any sector in the United States,” said David French, the head of government relations at the National Retail Federation. “But the devil is in the details.”

With many key pieces of the Trump tax plan still missing, French is worried that Trump might propose something to offset the lost revenue from cutting the corporate tax rate to 15 percent. A border adjustment tax, such as the one House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) favors, would more than offset the benefits of a rate cut to 15 percent, French said, “while others would see their taxes go to zero.”

French said that he expects a middle-class tax cut and business tax reform, but he does not expect Trump to unveil a complete package with offsetting items. “I don’t think that’s going to be in the president’s plan,” French said. “I expect it will be big-picture, high-level, without a lot of details.”

“There are so many special interests involved,” said Ed Yardeni, an investment strategist and president of Yardeni Research. “This is going to be a real test of whether he’s going to be able to drain the swamp or whether he’s going to pump more water in.”

Among the other big losers could be companies such as utilities or cable companies that have accumulated large debts and currently can deduct interest payments. A lower tax rate would make those tax deductions less useful.

In a report to investors in December, a team of JPMorgan analysts said that “we see reform to the corporate tax code as currently envisioned . . . as an overall net negative” for big utilities. The analysts said that because the utilities had large amounts of debt, they would be hurt more than other companies.

A big corporate tax cut could also create a crisis for individual income taxes. Without a matching cut in individual income tax rates, individuals would be able to change the structure of their pay checks so that the payments went through limited liability companies that would pay no more than 15 percent under the business tax cut, a rate far lower than the top individual rate of 39.6 percent.

That’s similar to what basketball coach Bill Self did after Kansas exempted entrepreneurs from paying taxes and eliminated the business tax. Self, the coach of the University of Kansas Jayhawks, put about 90 percent of his pay package into a corporate entity to sidestep the taxes he would have paid if it were all considered simply salary, according to a report by radio station KCUR-FM.

“Whenever a lower rate is imposed on one kind of economic activity versus another, that low-rate activity all of a sudden becomes a lot more important,” Burman said. “A lot of tax sheltering was done to make ordinary income look like capital gains.”

He added, “An associate professor in the Kansas philosophy department probably pays a higher tax rate than Bill Self.”

But if Trump cuts individual income taxes to match the cut in corporate rates, that would create an enormous shortfall in tax revenue and a ballooning of the budget deficit.

Kelsey Snell and Tory Newmyer contributed to this report.

Arkansas on Monday night executed two inmates in back-to-back lethal injections, carrying out the country’s first double execution since 2000.

The executions came after Arkansas, pushing back on legal challenges, executed an inmate last week, the state’s first lethal injection in more than a decade. As part of a hurried execution pace that has drawn national attention, Arkansas officials returned to the execution chamber four days later to carry out a pair of death sentences.

The second execution Monday night was briefly delayed by a federal judge so she could consider claims that the first lethal injection may have been botched, but she lifted that stay shortly before 9:30 p.m. local time. The second inmate was pronounced dead about an hour later, according to the Associated Press, which had a reporter witness it.

These lethal injections marked the first back-to-back executions in the United States since Texas carried out two death sentences in one night nearly two decades ago. Arkansas was also the first state to make such an attempt since a widely publicized botch in Oklahoma in 2014.

[With its lethal drugs expiring, Arkansas set an unprecedented execution schedule]

Arkansas hoped this month to resume executions by carrying out eight death sentences in 11 days, an unprecedented schedule that has been thwarted by court orders blocking half of those lethal injections. State officials then shifted their focus to carrying out the remaining executions on the schedule.

Jack H. Jones Jr. and Marcel W. Williams, both of whom have been on Arkansas death row since being convicted of brutal murders two decades ago, unsuccessfully sought to delay their lethal injections at a state prison southeast of Little Rock.

Both appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which rejected their requests Monday afternoon and evening. Jones was executed first. Williams was scheduled to follow not long after, but his lethal injection was postponed while his lawyers argued in federal court that Jone’s execution was botched. Both men had said their medical issues presented complications to the executions, which involve injections of three drugs.

The Supreme Court first denied Jones’s request for a stay about an hour before the executions were set to begin at 7 p.m. Monday in Arkansas. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who is assigned cases from the federal circuit covering Arkansas, referred the request to the full court, which denied it without explanation; Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the only member of the court to register a dissent.

[Arkansas executed one death-row inmate. Three more executions are planned this month.]

Jones was pronounced dead at 7:20 p.m., 14 minutes after his lethal injection got underway, according to the Associated Press, which had a reporter serve as a media witness. He delivered a last statement expressing remorse.

Arkansas inmates Jack Jones, left, and Marcel Williams. (Arkansas Department of Correction via AP)

One media witness says Jones’s “lips did move, but only very briefly at the very start of the process.” According to the Associated Press, its reporter who witnessed Jones’s execution said that the inmate moved his lips briefly after the sedative was first administered and noted that officials put a tongue depressor in his mouth intermittently during the first few minutes. The AP reporter also said Jones’s chest stopped moving two minutes after they checked his consciousness.

Under the Arkansas lethal-injection protocol, state officials must check to make sure inmates are unconscious at least five minutes after the sedative is injected. If they remain conscious, officials are then directed to inject a second dose of the sedative.

[Arkansas carries out first execution since 2005 after Supreme Court denies stay requests]

Williams’s attorneys say in their filing that he did not agree to have a central line inserted, and warned that their client’s execution could be “even more torturous” than Jones’s.

State officials filed a short response pushing back on these assertions about the IV and the execution, calling them “inaccurate” and “utterly baseless.”

“The claim that Jones was moving his lips and gulping for air is unsupported by press accounts or the accounts of other witnesses,” the Arkansas response stated. “The drugs were administered to Jones at 7:06 p.m. and he was pronounced dead at 7:20 p.m. There was no constitutional violation in Jones’ execution.”

After Baker lifted her stay, Williams’s execution proceeded, and he was pronounced dead at 10:33 p.m. after a 17-minute lethal injection, the Associated Press reported.

After both executions were finished, Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) — who scheduled the lethal injections and did not issue a statement following the execution last week — said that “the rule of law was upheld” and “justice has prevailed.”

In a statement after Jones’s execution, Hutchinson said that the “victim’s family has waited patiently for justice” for two decades. After Williams’s execution, Hutchinson thanked the victim’s family for their patience and said “in this case our laws ended in justice.”

The lethal injections in Arkansas were planned as part of a schedule that would have been without parallel in modern capital punishment. Hutchinson set eight executions to occur in pairs — back-to-back on four nights spread out over last week and this week — and while most executions occur with little public notice, the timetable in Arkansas drew unusual attention and some criticism.

Attorneys for the inmates filed a volley of appeals seeking to delay the executions, while two dozen former corrections officials wrote a letter to Hutchinson asking him to reconsider the schedule. They warned that the schedule was “needlessly exacerbating the strain and stress placed on” the people carrying it out and saying the timetable could “increase the chance of an error occurring.”

Arkansas officials defended this schedule as necessary because their stock of midazolam, a common sedative that has provoked controversy after some executions and is one of three products used in the state’s executions, expires at the end of April. Due to an ongoing shortage of lethal injection drugs, Arkansas authorities say they are not sure if more can be obtained. Leslie Rutledge (R), the state’s attorney general, pledged to fight attempts to delay the remaining executions, saying that “families have waited far too long to see justice.”

As the execution dates approached, both sides engaged in a multifaceted legal battle, with death-row inmates and Arkansas officials appealing to state and federal courts. Drug companies also weighed in, unsuccessfully asking judges to prevent the state from using their products, which at least one company suggested was obtained through dishonest means.

Death-row inmates in Arkansas also appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court as a group, but those requests have been rebuffed, most recently Monday, when the high court denied a request to rehear a case from Arkansas inmates that the justices had already denied. No explanations were given, though Justice Sotomayor said she would have granted the petitions in that case.

The lethal injections planned Monday come just four days after Arkansas resumed executions, carrying out the death sentence for Ledell Lee after the Supreme Court declined stay requests.

Last week, the Arkansas Supreme Court blocked the first two executions on the schedule, and another execution planned for the same night as Lee’s was stayed. Another execution is planned for Thursday night, while a second originally set that night was stayed this month by a federal judge.

While two executions per night had been the original plan in Arkansas, Jones and Williams appear to be the only two who will actually be put to death under the back-to-back scheduling.

Jones, 52, was sentenced to death in 1996 for raping and killing Mary Phillips. According to court records, Jones stalked and killed Phillips, a bookkeeper, and before killing her, he beat her 11-year-old daughter so severely that police thought she was dead when they got to the scene.

The Arkansas Department of Correction’s Cummins Unit prison, where executions occur. (Kelly P. Kissel/AP)

[Arkansas had shifted its focus to remaining executions after court losses]

Williams, 46, was sentenced to death in 1997 for abducting, robbing, raping and killing Stacy Errickson, who was 22 and was living at the Little Rock Air Force Base while her husband was serving overseas. Arkansas officials, in court filings opposing a stay in his case, said he forced her at gunpoint to take cash from ATMs before raping, beating and strangling her.

Attorneys for Williams have argued in court filings that he had poor counsel during his trial in both his guilt and penalty phases, which they said meant he was sentenced to death despite the jury not hearing any mitigating evidence arguing against the death penalty.

Protesters praying, emotionally preparing for scheduled execution of Marcel Williams… #ARExecutions pic.twitter.com/SJsguGKALw

— Kimberly Rusley (@KATVKimberly) April 25, 2017

In another filing, they pointed to health issues, saying he weighs 400 pounds and suffers from several medical maladies that meant the planned lethal injection “was more likely to maim than kill him.” His attorneys argued for stays on both counts, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit rejected both requests on Friday.

Rutledge said she felt the execution provided justice for Errickson’s family and friends.

“I hope that tonight’s lawful execution brings much-needed peace to all of Stacy’s loved ones, particularly her now-adult children Brittany and Bryan,” she said in a statement.

[Arkansas courts had briefly blocked the use of a lethal injection drug]

The Arkansas Supreme Court rejected stay requests from both men. The 8th Circuit, which had denied an appeal filed by the eight inmates facing execution that challenged the Arkansas method of execution, also denied another challenge Friday that was filed by some of the inmates — including Williams, but not Jones — and focused on the state’s clemency procedures.

The double execution was the country’s first since August 2000. Texas was in the midst of carrying out 40 death sentences that year, the most for any state in a single year since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, according to the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center. (Executions nationwide have fallen since that time, and last year, 20 death sentences were carried out nationwide.)

Before the double execution in 2000, the first inmate’s last words were an admonition against racism targeting black people, according to records kept by Texas corrections officials. He then said, “Let’s do it.” The second inmate apologized to his victim and his family before saying, “I am ready. I love you all.”

[Drug companies take aim at Arkansas executions and demand lethal injection drugs back]

Arkansas is not the first state to plan a double execution since then. Perhaps the most highly publicized botched lethal injection in recent memory occurred the last time a state tried carrying out two executions in one night.

In 2014, Oklahoma authorities attempted to execute Clayton Lockett, a convicted murderer, in the first of two lethal injections planned that night. They bungled the process: Lockett writhed and grimaced on the gurney, prompting the execution to be called off, and he died 43 minutes after it began. (The second execution scheduled for that night was delayed; when it was carried out months later, Oklahoma officials used the wrong lethal injection drug. The state has yet to resume executions.)

Officials in Oklahoma later blamed that bungled execution on a misplaced IV. In a state review, officials involved in the process said the back-to-back scheduling added to the stress they felt.

This story, first published at 4:58 p.m. Monday, has been updated repeatedly with news from Arkansas. 

Further reading:

Executions and death sentences declined last year in the U.S.

After divided Supreme Court allows Alabama execution, inmate heaves and coughs during lethal injection

 The state Supreme Court justice who stepped down to protest the death penalty

The White House sought Monday to calm a jittery Washington ahead of a showdown with Congress over spending, and President Trump softened his demand that a deal to keep the federal government open include money to begin construction on his long-promised border wall.

Despite one-party control at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, the brinkmanship that came to define spending battles in the Obama years has tumbled into the Trump era, as have the factional divisions over strategy and priorities that have gripped the GOP for a decade.

But with a Friday deadline looming to pass a new spending bill, the Trump administration projected confidence that a shutdown would be avoided. In the face of fierce Democratic opposition to funding the wall’s construction, White House officials signaled Monday that the president may be open to an agreement that includes money for border security if not specifically for a wall, with an emphasis on technology and border agents rather than a structure.

Trump showed even more flexibility Monday afternoon, telling conservative journalists in a private meeting that he was open to delaying funding for wall construction until September, a White House official confirmed.

“The president is working hard to keep the government open,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters Monday. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said he was “very confident” that an agreement would be reached by Friday, but he pointedly said he could not “guarantee” that a government closure would be averted.

President Trump and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley arrive for a White House luncheon with ambassadors from countries on the U.N. Security Council. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Trump has asked Congress for $1.5 billion in new money to start construction on the wall, and he wants an additional $2.6 billion for the fiscal year that begins in October. The wall, experts say, would cost $21.6 billion and take 3½ years to construct.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said technology and law enforcement, including the use of drones, would be “a much more effective way to secure the border.” (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

“The Wall is a very important tool in stopping drugs from pouring into our country and poisoning our youth (and many others)!” he wrote in a morning post.

In another message several hours later, Trump wrote that if “the wall is not built, which it will be, the drug situation will NEVER be fixed the way it should be! #BuildTheWall.”

Still, Trump has left himself wiggle room to agree to sign a government funding bill that does not include money for the wall.

“My base understands the wall is going to get built, whether I have it funded here or if I get it funded shortly thereafter,” Trump said in a recent interview with the Associated Press. “That wall’s getting built, okay? One hundred percent.”

Asked if he would sign a bill without wall funding, Trump told the news service, “I just don’t know yet.”

The debate over wall funding is just one of several moving pieces congressional leaders are trying to address this week to avoid a partial government shutdown. In 2015, President Barack Obama made a deal with congressional lawmakers to fund government operations through April 28, 2017. If a new agreement isn’t reached by then, many federal employees will stop being paid, national parks will close, and a number of other changes will kick in — as in 2013, the last time the government shut down.

Since new rules about spending bills went into place after Jimmy Carter’s administration, a government shutdown has never occurred when a single political party has controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress.

Paramount for many Republican lawmakers is funding the government, as opposed to the wall specifically. If the government shuts down, they fear, voters could blame the GOP for failing to govern, and the party could suffer the consequences in the 2018 midterm elections.

“I’d like to make it as clean as we can and fund the government,” said Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.). “I wouldn’t mind funding the wall, but it’s a question of what we can do. The question is, what’s doable and will we make the deadline?”

Sen. James E. Risch (R-Idaho) said that an effective “wall” along the border had been “authorized years and years and years ago,” in the Secure Fence Act of 2006.

“It’s been partially built and partially funded. He wants to fund the rest of it and build it — perfectly legitimate debate that should take place on that,” Risch said.

Asked if that debate could happen in three days, Risch chuckled. “Things get done quickly around here when they want it to get done,” he said.

Even when Republicans controlled the House during the Obama administration, they could rarely pass spending bills without Democratic support. That is because a number of the House’s most conservative members often refused to support such bills, making a bipartisan majority coalition a necessity. In addition, 60 votes are needed to pass a requisite procedural vote in the Senate. With just 52 seats, Senate Republicans will need bipartisan support in that chamber as well.

Among other guarantees, Democrats want assurances that insurance subsidies through the Affordable Care Act will continue to be funded. There have been discussions among Republicans that Democrats could agree to provide money for the construction of the wall in exchange for those health funds, but Democrats have refused.

Sunday morning, congressional Democrats submitted to Republicans a compromise spending plan, which included some new money for border security but only if it did not go toward a wall. Democrats also asked for assurances that the health insurance subsidies would continue to be funded, language that would shore up benefits for coal miners and a change that would expand Medicaid benefits to people in Puerto Rico, according to a senior Democratic congressional aide.

Pelosi told reporters on a conference call Monday that Congress was “on the path to get it done until [Trump] did intervene” and that the administration’s actions so far belied his campaign promise to “make Mexico pay” for the border wall.

James Norton, a former deputy assistant undersecretary for homeland security under President George W. Bush, said funding for technologies, such as cameras and radars, on the border has dropped off since the early 2000s. He said to get money for the wall or other border security measures, the administration will have to “sell specifics” to lawmakers.

“Each part is going to need to be sold in a specific way to Congress, and they’re going to have to hit the Hill hard,” Norton said. “It won’t be easy.”

Damian Paletta and Sean Sullivan contributed to this report.

Read more at PowerPost

President Trump is pursuing a drastic cut in the corporate tax rate, a move that is likely to grow the national debt and breach a long-held Republican goal of curbing federal borrowing.

The president has instructed advisers to propose cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent, according to White House officials who said they were not authorized to speak publicly about the plan. The rate reduction — which independent budget experts say could cost the federal government $2.4 trillion over a decade — is larger than what House Republicans had proposed in their own plan.

White House officials said the president would make the announcement Wednesday as part of a release of broad principles to overhaul the tax code — days before a 100-day deadline Trump had given himself for achieving most top campaign goals. They are also expected to discuss changes to the personal income tax, among other aspects of the tax code, said two White House officials.

Trump has pledged that the tax cut in total would be the largest in U.S. history, and his advisers have said that the economic growth it stimulates would make up for any shortfall in revenue.

“The tax plan will pay for itself with economic growth,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Monday.

But any changes would have to be backed by Congress, and passing a sweeping tax cut plan that widens the deficit would be virtually impossible on Capitol Hill without bipartisan support, in the view of key players in both parties. Many Democrats have said they will not support such a plan, making Trump’s proposal a tough political sell from the start.

Republicans, meanwhile, have argued for years that curbing the deficit is a top national priority. And even members of the GOP who agree that tax cuts can significantly boost growth have acknowledged that any big tax cut would require raising other revenue or finding budget savings.

A House Republican tax plan endorsed by House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), for example, would raise nearly $1 trillion by imposing a new tax on imports, frequently referred to as a border-adjustment tax. The White House flirted with the idea but appears to have moved away from it in recent weeks in the face of opposition from industry groups.

Mnuchin and National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn are set to meet with top Republican lawmakers Wednesday to discuss the administration’s tax plan.

“The administration has embarked in a very dangerous direction,” said Edward Kleinbard, the former chief of staff for Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation. “If it is going to rely on the principle that tax cuts can pay for themselves, history has demonstrated that tax policies move the growth needle a bit but no more than that.”

Trump surprised lawmakers — and even many advisers — last week when he announced he would release details of his tax plan on Wednesday. Advisers said Trump is eager to make a mark on a top issue before the 100-day anniversary of his administration, after being frustrated by House Republicans over the failure to advance legislation to replace the Affordable Care Act.

But several House Republicans close to Ryan said that they were taken aback by the latest tax push. They said the president risked alienating the speaker and his allies on Capitol Hill if they got behind a proposal that had weak or fragile support in the chamber, and they expressed concern about Congress piling up too many issues this week, such as a revived effort to pass a health-care overhaul and keep the government funded while funneling money toward border security projects.

The Republicans also noted that Ryan has already outlined the House’s tax plan over the past year and secured buy-in from members on the general outline of rates and the inclusion of a border tax. Ryan’s plan proposed a 20 percent corporate tax rate.

Republicans familiar with the leadership’s thinking said Monday that House leaders see the 15 percent corporate rate as an understandable restatement of a pledge Trump made during the presidential campaign. But they cautioned that passing such legislation would be complicated and likely necessitate other tax hikes or spending cuts.

They expected the leadership, however, to agree with the broad points and spirit of Trump’s plan this week even as details and a path to passage remain unclear.

The Wall Street Journal first reported Trump’s request to cut the corporate tax rate to 15 percent Monday afternoon.

Businesses are projected to pay $340 billion in corporate taxes in 2018, roughly 10 percent of all revenue collected by the government.

At 35 percent, the United States has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, but most companies pay a much lower effective rate because the tax code is riddled with deductions.

Still, lawmakers from both parties have said the corporate tax rate must be reduced to help U.S. companies compete with firms headquartered in other countries and to prevent U.S. firms from moving overseas.

The Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan tax group affiliated with the Brookings Institution and Urban Institute, has estimated that Trump’s corporate tax proposal, as outlined during the campaign, would cost $2.4 trillion over 10 years.

It also estimated that his entire campaign tax proposal would cost $7.2 trillion — figures that Trump aides have sharply criticized as failing to take into account the revenue generated by economic growth spurred by the tax overhaul.

Inside the White House, Trump has faced a debate about how far to go with his tax proposal. Trump also called for cutting the debt during the presidential campaign, and advisers such as budget director Mick Mulvaney was a major proponent of deficit reduction as a hard-line conservative in the House.

“He’s not backing away from the supply-side agenda,” said Stephen Moore, a senior economic policy expert at the Heritage Foundation who advised the Trump campaign, noting that there are “two competing ways of thinking about taxes inside of the White House.”

Moore defined those groups inside the administration as “those who are deficit hawks versus those who don’t care about that. And those who don’t care about it seem to be winning out. Fifteen percent suggests a turn toward them.”

White House officials have said there are several basic principles to their tax plan. They want to simplify the tax code, cut the corporate tax rate, pass a middle-class tax cut and create a way to punish companies that move overseas and ship goods back into the country. They also want to encourage U.S. companies to move money back into the United States.

Trump’s push for unveiling his tax plan began last week during several meetings in the Oval Office during which he expressed his frustration with the slow pace of legislation on several fronts, including taxes, according to two officials who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Trump urged his top economic advisers, including Mnuchin, to ready a rollout for this week and to keep the details of the plan controlled as much as possible by Trump advisers and Cabinet members rather than by GOP lawmakers, the officials said.

As one of the officials described Trump’s outlook, “he wants high growth and high employment.”

Max Ehrenfreund contributed to this report.