how Trumps tax plan would benefit the most elite taxpayers. The 50-state analysis............

[riversedge]

https://itep.org/context-is-everything/

August 17, 2017

During a 2000 presidential debate between George W. Bush and Al Gore, the former said he wanted “to send one-quarter of the surplus back to the people who pay the bills,” and for “everybody who pays taxes to have their tax rates cut.”

Then candidate Bush was defending a proposal that he claimed would cut taxes across the board but conceded would primarily benefit richer taxpayers. At the time, the economy hadn’t yet cooled, the dotcom bubble had not yet burst, and the federal government was running a small budget surplus.

In that context, President Bush’s first round of top-heavy tax cuts passed in March 2001 with more than half of the public’s support and even with some votes from Democratic lawmakers.

Today, the economic climate is starkly different, but it seems GOP leaders are relying on messaging and luck to push through the biggest tax package since 1986. The White House, Republican leaders and anti-tax advocates all have been toeing the same erroneous line: their plans to cut corporate and individual taxes will benefit middle class families and grow the economy. This is, of course, baloney. Congressional leadership and the White House would have to make radical, fundamentally different changes to current proposals for their final tax plan to be anything other than a giveaway to the wealthy and corporations.

No detailed plan is yet on the table, but an ITEP analysis of President Trump’s tax principles reveals the wealthy would benefit most. The richest 1 percent of taxpayers would receive the greatest share (61.4 percent) of proposed cuts while the bottom 60 percent of taxpayers would receive just 10 percent of the cut.

ITEP took another look at the data to examine how Trump’s tax plan would benefit the most elite taxpayers. The 50-state analysis released this week found that millionaires would receive an average annual tax cut of $217,000, while families earning less than $45,000 would see an average tax cut of $230 (although some wouldn’t receive a tax cut at all.) Millionaires represent 0.5 percent of the population, but would receive 48.8 percent of the cut, while taxpayers with income of $45,000 or less represent nearly half of the population but would receive 4.4 percent of the cut.

We know that anti-tax advocates and their allies will argue that of course the rich would receive bigger tax cuts because they have more money and pay more taxes. But it’s important to note that under Trump’s proposal, they would receive a bigger cut in absolute dollars as well as a share of their income (millionaire tax cuts represent 7 percent of their income on average versus just 0.6 percent for those earning $45,000 or less). In practice, this means middle-income families would pay a bigger share of the ................




League4PublicPolicy? @MichLeague Aug 18

In Michigan 38% of proposed tax cuts in #TrumpBudget go to those earning over $1 million, according to @iteptweets http://bit.ly/2v7x9NU

Link to tweet

[joeybee12]

1. We have Bush to thank for the recession along with endless wars

Let's not forget how awful he was

[world wide wally]

2. And Trump supporters earning less than $45,000 will act like this is the most crucial

issue in history. Almost as important as cutting their health care.

[Willie Pep]

3. Most don't seem to care.

Or they actually buy the argument about how reducing taxes on the rich will produce trickle down benefits for ordinary working people. Then you have the people who expect to be rich one day and don't want to be taxed when they become wealthy. Americans overestimate the likelihood of becoming wealthy and this probably explains why Americans tolerate so much inequality.

See: http://voxeu.org/article/intergenerational-mobility-and-preferences-redistribution