One of former President Donald Trump’s most enduring legacies was what he did for working-class Americans: His 2017 tax reform bill, one of the few victories he got under a GOP-controlled Congress, surprisingly enough.
That’s according to a new analysis of Internal Revenue Service data, The Hill reported, while adding that the progress made for average Americans in terms of tax cuts is now being threatened by Joe Biden’s massively expensive — and misnamed — “Build Back Better” plan. At $2.4 trillion, and after multi-trillion dollar spending packages for infrastructure and COVID ‘relief’ over the past two years, the legislation includes a host of tax increases that are not just aimed at “wealthy” earners.
The Hill notes:
President Biden and congressional Democrats’ Build Back Better (BBB) Act is now in the hands of the Senate. That legislative body’s 50-50 partisan split will undoubtedly make the bill’s passage difficult.
In order for BBB to become law, Democratic Senate leadership will need to convince moderates such as Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) that the legislation’s $2.4 trillion price tag can be offset by expanding the IRS and its enforcement efforts while imposing substantial tax reform measures.
Congressional Democrats have argued that one of the best ways to pay for the legislation is to raise taxes on wealthy households, which, according to many on the left, have benefited disproportionately and unfairly from the 2017 tax reform law passed by Republicans and signed by former President Trump. The latest data, however, proves that this claim is pure mythology.
According to IRS income data, it clearly shows that on average, all income brackets received substantial benefits from the GOP-passed tax reform bill that, by the way, Trump promised during the 2016 campaign, “with the biggest beneficiaries being working and middle-income filers, not the top 1 percent, as so many Democrats have argued,” the outlet noted.
For instance:
— Tax filers with an adjusted gross income of $15,000 to $50,000 annually received tax cuts in the range of 16-26 percent in 2018, the first year the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act took effect and the most recent year that income figures are available.
— Americans earning between $50,000 and $100,0000 got tax breaks ranging from 15 to 17 percent.
— Earners bringing home between $100,000 and $500,000 in AGI saw personal income taxes cut by 11-13 percent.
“The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would reform the individual income tax code by lowering tax rates on wages, investment, and business income; broadening the tax base; and simplifying the tax code. The plan would lower the corporate income tax rate to 21 percent and move the United States from a worldwide to a territorial system of taxation,” the Tax Foundation wrote about a week before Trump signed the TCJA into law in December 2017.
At the time, then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) gaslit the legislation, claiming, ““Despite Republicans’ empty promises to cut taxes for middle class working families, it’s clear that the GOP tax plan for the wealthiest is rich indeed.
“House Republicans’ tax bill would increase taxes for 12 percent of Americans next year, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center,” Pelosi added.
“The truth is already catching up with the GOP’s snake oil pitch,” Pelosi noted further. “Instead of pushing a deficit-exploding handout to corporations and the wealthy that increases taxes on millions of hard-working families, Republicans must join Democrats to work on bipartisan tax reform that puts the middle class first.”
Trump’s and the Republicans’ tax reform legislation literally did put working- and middle-class earners first.
But do you know who is actually putting the wealthy first in the Build Back Better plan? Democrats.
Specifically, the measure repeals limits on SALT — state and local taxes — the 2017 tax reform law put in place, which will help very wealthy blue state dwellers to the tune of about $200 billion a year in tax savings, Fox Business reported last month.
So, just who is the party of the working class and who is the party of the wealthy?
