The White House has promised the biggest tax cut in the history of the country, and the promise of tax relief was a crucial aspect of Trump's pitch to voters as a candidate. Many Americans are probably expecting that Trump will bring down their taxes.
In fact, while Trump has not yet laid out a detailed plan, the proposals that administration officials have put forward so far would result in an increase in taxes for nearly one in five American households, according to an analysis published Wednesday by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center (TPC).
And among those in the middle class, almost a quarter would see their taxes go up, according to the TPC analysis. For households with annual incomes between $49,000 and $86,000, those facing a hike would see an average annual increase of $1,000.
Among the other three-quarters of taxpayers in that range who would enjoy a tax cut, the average annual decrease of their household tax bill would be about $1,320, according to the TPC.
Trump has promised to bring down taxes, dropping the rates on individual and corporate income, throwing out the estate tax and simplifying the system for ordinary taxpayers overall.
Yet in order to make up for some of the revenue that the federal government would forgo with reduced rates, his advisers have also proposed a few tax hikes as well -- mainly in the form of eliminating write-offs. The result is that while many households would pay less, some would pay more.
The benefits of the proposals from the Trump administration, however, are overwhelmingly concentrated among the very richest taxpayers.
Nearly half of the total savings (49 percent) would accrue to the richest 1 percent of households. Among the richest 0.1 percent -- the wealthiest one in 1,000 households, those with more than $3.4 million in annual income -- only 2 percent would pay more in taxes.
The other 98 percent would receive a tax cut, worth an average of nearly $1 million a year per household.
Will the Trump tax cut 'pay for itself'?
The TPC analysis contradicts that claim. In the short term, reducing taxes would stimulate the economy, the authors predict. Over the long term, however, Trump's proposals would force the federal government to borrow more to make up the difference, and the tax cut would become a burden on the economy overall due to the additional federal debt.
Republicans could prevent that by reducing federal spending at the same time, although Trump has pledged not to reduce benefits for Medicare and Social Security, the entitlements that are the principle reasons for rising outlays.
Another option would be to reform the tax system in ways that encourage Americans to work and save, but finding enough alternative sources of revenue to avoid adding to the deficit, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a conservative economist and the former director of the Congressional Budget Office.
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...r-of-the-middle-class/?utm_term=.7d9e0d4707ebTax hikes for some
All these changes would mean less money for the federal government, and Trump and his advisers have talked about ways of raising revenue in other areas.
For instance, Trump's campaign proposed eliminating the special status for heads of household, which gives single parents a break on their taxes. Getting rid of it would result in a tax hike for many in the lower middle class.
Among more affluent households, some would pay more as a result of the proposal to end the personal exemption. A taxpayer would no longer be able to claim a break for each member of the household. And Trump's lieutenants have also discussed eliminating all of the individual deductions, with exceptions for writing down interest paid on mortgages and gifts to charity.
If those changes were implemented, they would most negatively affect Americans who are rich, but not quite rich enough. Nearly a third of households with incomes between $217,000 and $308,000 -- those in the 90th through 95th percentiles -- would pay more in taxes. The average annual hike for households in this group would be $3,900.
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Trumps tax cuts would give the poor $40 each and the ultrarich $940,000
The package, the TPC finds, would overwhelmingly help the wealthy. Including the tax hikes, the overall plan would give the average family earning under $25,000 per year a $40 tax cut, or a 0.3 percent boost in after-tax income. The top 0.1 percent, earning above $3.4 million a year, would get an average tax cut of $937,700, or a 13.3 percent boost in after-tax income
The most costly elements, according to TPC, are the corporate rate cut ($2.3 trillion over 10 years), the individual rate cuts (also $2 trillion), and the new lower rate for pass-through income ($2 trillion). Pass-through companies owner-operated businesses whose profits are taxed as individual income are overwhelmingly owned by rich people, so cutting the top rate on income from them from 39.6 percent under current law to 15 percent under Trumps plan is a huge, regressive, cut. It would also encourage tax evasion by spurring high-income people to stop earning wages from their employers and instead form pass-through businesses that their employers can pay instead, to take advantage of the new low rate.
Source: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/12/15959210/trump-tax-cuts-reform-tax-policy-centerUsually, when challenged on the numbers for its tax proposals, the Trump administration has insisted that theyll lead to large-scale economic growth, which can largely offset the cost. The TPC finds that this isnt the case. The total plan, incorporating both revenue raisers and tax cuts, would cost $3.5 trillion over 10 years before taking economic growth into account, and $3.4 trillion after you take it into account. You only raise $108.9 billion from growth effects.
The revenue raisers also serve to make Trumps plan even more regressive. If you just look at the tax cuts he's proposing, 60.9 percent of the benefits go to the top 1 percent of Americans. That's a pretty astonishing tilt toward the rich. But if you look at the combined effects of the cuts and the revenue raisers, 76.3 percent of the benefits go to the top 1 percent, and 94.8 percent go to the top 5 percent. Getting rid of head of household filing status and personal exemptions are tax increases that overwhelmingly hit middle-class people and don't hurt the rich much at all, especially since the personal exemption currently phases out for rich taxpayers.
We emphasize that we are not analyzing the Trump administrations tax plan: the released outline contains too many unknowns to do so, TPC emphasizes. It had to fill in a lot of vague parts of Trumps plan to produce numbers. But the report does indicate that the Trump plan will likely be very regressive, and very expensive.