The Republican Tax Plan is STILL a Giveaway to the Wealthiest Americans and Corporations

Tax Policy Center: “Tax Cuts For Corporations and, Especially, Pass-Through Businesses, Would Mostly Benefit the Highest-Income Households.” 

ABC News Poll: 60 Percent Of Americans Say Trump Tax Plan Will Benefit Wealthy

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THE REPUBLICAN TAX PLAN IS A HUGE GIVEAWAY TO THE WEALTHIEST AMERICANS AND CORPORATIONS

Duke University Law Professor Lawrence A. Zelenak:  “The most striking aspect of the GOP tax proposal is the skewing of its benefits in favor of corporations and wealthy individuals, rather than middle-income families.” …  “For example, while the proposal cuts the tax rate for corporations almost in half, and repeals the estate tax, the proposal actually reduces the per-child tax benefits by several hundred dollars for many middle-income families.” [Newsweek, 11/2/17]

Washington Post Wonk Blog: Winners: “Big Corporations” and “The Super-Rich.” “Big corporations. American mega-businesses would get a substantial tax reduction. The bill cuts the top rate that large corporations pay from 35 percent to 20 percent, the biggest one-time drop in the big-business tax rate ever.” … “The super-rich. The estate tax, often called the “death tax” by its critics, would go away by 2024, meaning wealthy families would be able to pass on lavish estates and trust funds to their heirs tax-free. At the moment, only estates worth over $5.49 million face the estate tax (the GOP plan doubles that amount immediately until the tax goes totally away). The mega-wealthy also would get to keep charitable deductions, a popular way to lower their tax bills, and they no longer would have to pay the alternative minimum tax (AMT), a safeguard against excessive tax dodging that's been in place since 1969.” [WaPo, 11/2/17]

National Farmers Union:  “While NFU supports efforts to simplify the tax code, we adamantly oppose the overarching elements of this plan because they shift the nation’s tax burden from the top earners in our country to the backs of American family farmers, ranchers and the middle class. This plan offers significant tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. It repeals the estate tax, a significant revenue generator that affects only the wealthiest in our nation. And it does not provide adequate offsets for these cuts, translating to a $1.51 trillion increase to our federal deficit.” [Press Release, 11/2/17]

THE REPUBLICAN TAX PLAN CUTS THE PASS-THROUGH RATE TO 25% - A BOON TO THE TOP ONE PERCENT

Treasury Department Economists: “Relative To Traditional Business Income, Pass-Through Business Income Is Substantially More Concentrated Among High-Earners.” “We find that pass-through participation and pass-through income are especially concentrated among high-earners. Relative to households in the bottom half of the income distribution, households in the top-1% of the income distribution are over fifty times as likely to receive positive partnership income. And the average top-1% household earns over six-hundred times the amount of partnership income as the average household in the bottom half. Overall, 69% of pass-through income earned by individuals accrues to the top-1%.” [NBER Working Paper; Business In The United States: Who Owns It And How Much Tax Do They Pay?; October 2015]

Gene Sperling, Former Director of the Economic Council: “It is, by design, intended to the top 1 percent.” [Morning Consult, 11/2/17]

THE REPUBLICAN TAX PLAN CUTS THE CORPORATE TAX RATE TO 20% – ANOTHER GIVEAWAY TO THE WEALTHY

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: “The evidence indicates that most of the benefits from a corporate rate cut would go to those at the top, with only a small share flowing to low- and moderate-income families.  Mainstream estimates conclude that more than one-third of the benefit of corporate rate cuts flows to the top 1 percent of Americans, and 70 percent flows to the top fifth. Corporate rate cuts could even hurt most Americans since they must eventually be paid for with other tax increases or spending cuts.” [CBPP, 10/11/17]

Treasury Department Office of Tax Analysis: “In summary, 82% of the corporate income tax burden is distributed to capital income and 18% is distributed to labor income.” [Distributing the Corporate Income Tax: Revised U.S. Treasury Methodology, 5/17/12]

James Nunns, Tax Policy Center: “The Tax Policy Center assigns 80 percent of the corporate income tax burden to capital and only 20 percent to labor (workers’ wages and fringe benefits).” [Fact Check.Org, 9/7/17]

REPUBLICAN PLAN ELIMINATES THE ESTATE TAX – A MOVE THAT “DISPROPORTIONATELY HELPS RICH PEOPLE” ACCORDING TO TRUMP TREASURY SECRETARY STEVEN MNUCHIN

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin:

STEPHANOPOULOS: But eliminating the estate tax will only go to the wealthiest Americans, those that have estates greater than $11 million.

MNUCHIN: Well, you are correct in that sense. And, again, we've been talking about the income tax system. As it relates to estate tax, you know, the death tax, we believe that people get taxed once and not twice. And that will enable them to keep lots of family businesses passed along. But the estate tax, you are correct. The majority of the estate tax is paid by the wealthy. [ABC’s This Week, 10/1/17; VIDEO]

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin: “It’s a philosophical issue, it’s an economic issue, and people who have family businesses should be able to pass them down, but obviously, the estate tax, I will concede, disproportionately helps rich people.” [Institute of International Finance, 10/14/17]

Politifact: “In 2017, estates worth less than $5.49 million are exempt from the tax, according to the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center. Above $5.49 million, the estate is generally taxed at 40 percent. However, family-owned farms and closely-held businesses may be able to pay less or pay in low-interest installments. So how many estates are affected by the tax? Not many, and the people who pay it are usually among the country’s richest families.” [Politifact, 9/28/17]

NO WONDER THE AMERICAN PEOPLE KNOW THE REPUBLICAN TAX PLAN IS A GIVEAWAY TO THE WEALTHY

ABC News: 60 Percent Of Americans Say Trump Tax Plan Will Benefit Wealthy. “Americans oppose Donald Trump’s emerging tax plan by broad a 17-point margin, with 60 percent saying it favors the wealthy -– including six in 10 of the wealthy themselves. … A key criticism is the sense that the plan would mostly benefit the rich; 60 percent say so, versus 17 percent who think it will treat all people equally and 13 percent who think the middle class mainly will benefit. Even among those with incomes of $100,000 or more, 61 percent think the plan chiefly will benefit the wealthy.” [ABC News, 11/3/17]