Trump advisers insist GOP tax-cut plan won’t favor rich

Outside analysis says 50% of reform benefits top 1%.

President Donald Trump’s top advisers said Sunday his proposed tax plan would not cut taxes disproportionately for the rich — despite an early nonpartisan analysis that says it will.

The White House and congressional Republicans released the broad strokes of a plan last week that would dramatically cut corporate tax rates from 35 percent to 20 percent, reduce the number of personal income tax brackets and boost the standard deduction.

The Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution released an analysis Friday that found the plan would deliver 50 percent of its total tax benefit to taxpayers in the top 1 percent, those with incomes above $730,000 a year.

But White House budget director Mick Mulvaney told CNN’s “State of the Union” it was too early for analysts to gauge that figure because the plan leaves out for now many crucial details, such as which income levels the new tax brackets would apply to.

“In fact, I don’t think anybody can. And anybody who says they can is simply lying to you,” Mulvaney said. “It is impossible to sit down and say, this will be the impact on this wage earner or this family at this particular time.”

Still, that didn’t stop Trump from doing just that during a speech in Indiana last week pitching the plan. In his remarks, Trump pointed to a number of locals, including Jonathan Blanton, an industrial janitor from Greentown, who earns a combined $90,000 a year with his wife.

“Under our tax plan they would have saved more than $1,000, and it could be substantially more,” Trump told the crowd. “And that’s just on federal taxes.”

Trump has also insisted that the plan wouldn’t reduce his personal tax bills.

The plan includes a number of provisions that favor the rich, including cutting the top income tax rate, getting rid of the alternative minimum tax, and eliminating the federal estate tax. Under current law, the first $11 million of an estate is exempt for a married couple, meaning only the wealthiest Americans pay it.

But Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Trump’s goal is to boost jobs and lower the tax burden for the middle class.

“Our objective is not to create tax cuts for the wealthy. Our objective is about creating middle-income tax cuts,” he said.