Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Trump: Tax Cuts For The Top 5%, Tax Hikes For The Rest

 

The non-partisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy issued a report yesterday, "A Distributional Analysis of Donald Trump's Tax Plan," and it exposes the real impacts of "working class hero" Malignant Loser's tax policies:

Former President Donald Trump has proposed a wide variety of tax policy changes. Taken together, these proposals would, on average, lead to a tax cut for the richest 5 percent of Americans and a tax increase for all other income groups.

If these proposals were in effect in 2026, the richest 1 percent would receive an average tax cut of about $36,300 and the next richest 4 percent would receive an average tax cut of about $7,200. All other groups would see a tax increase with the hike on the middle 20 percent at about $1,500 and the increase on the lowest-income 20 percent of Americans at about $800.  [snip]

Measured as a share of income, the tax increases faced by most Americans would fall hardest on working-class families. As illustrated in Figure 3, the middle 20 percent of Americans would face a tax increase equal to 2.1 percent of their income, while the poorest 20 percent of Americans would face a tax increase equal to 4.8 percent of their income – all while the top 5 percent get a tax cut...

The report goes on to detail the aspects of the Malignant Loser's proposals that impact tax policy.  This chart summarizes the changes (click to enlarge):



This should surprise no one, since regressive "trickle down" tax policy has long been a hallmark of Republicanism, now metastasized into the MAGA Trump cult.  The most recent example of this was the 2017 tax cut for billionaires and corporations.  That the reality of these "tax cuts for me, tax raises for thee" proposals haven't registered with those low- and middle- class voters who favor the way they "think" the Malignant Loser would run the economy is more than a little mind- boggling, and a communication failure of epic proportions.  But we have to wonder, even if they had the information as laid out in this report, would it make any difference in their support, even if their prime concern is "the economy"?  Even if the answer to that is no, the truth needs to keep being told, over and over again.