MIXED SIGNALS from White House cloud tax plan.

Inconsistent communication from the White House about how its tax plan would work and who would benefit comes as President Donald Trump’s team tries to build public support for his signature initiative.

It also leaves lawmakers guessing about what the president wants — or at least is willing to accept — as Congress fills in the broad tax framework Trump and GOP leaders released last month.

For example, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin got a swift rebuttal from a fellow Cabinet member after he went on national television earlier this month to claim a hypothetical Indiana family would save $1,000 under Trump’s tax plan.

White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney dismissed as flawed any attempt to predict the effect of the plan on a particular family because so many essential details had yet to be determined.

“It is impossible to sit down and say, this will be the impact on this wage earner or this family at this particular time,” Mulvaney said on CNN’s State of the Union on Oct. 1, the same day as Mnuchin’s appearance on ABC’s This Week.

Even Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch, whose panel is responsible for drafting tax legislation, said in an interview Monday that he wasn’t certain of Trump’s red lines — hours after the president shot down in a Twitter post a Republican idea to reduce annual limits on 401(k) retirement account contributions.

“We need to know what the president wants to do to try to coordinate it with him,” he said. “So far, I’m not quite sure where he’s going.”

House Republicans hope to vote before Thanksgiving on a final tax plan, which they expect to unveil as soon as next week, a senior party aide said.

The White House, meanwhile, downplayed reports of incongruous messaging among administration officials and instead put the onus on Democrats to help push through a tax overhaul.

“The Administration has always been clear and consistent on the top priorities for tax reform: giving middle-income Americans a tax cut and bringing the corporate rate down to 20% or lower,” press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. “We hope Democrats who have supported similar proposals in the past will put aside partisanship and support giving the middle class a major tax cut, American workers a pay raise, and our businesses of all sizes a level playing field to compete.”

Information for this article was contributed by Laura Litvan and John Voskuhl of Bloomberg News.