An affront to fairness
The tax plan Republicans are trying to push through Congress would be a largest-inhistory gift to the wealthiest Americans, with a singular attack on the people of New York, California, Texas and other states, via an unconscionable double tax on their income. It should come as no surprise that a Republican Party hostile to cities and captive to corporations is overseeing this mass theft — but the biting irony is that the ringleader is a President who last year wailed that the “whole economy” was “rigged.”
The House and Senate tax bills differ in a few ways. Both would widen deficits by more than $1 trillion over a decade in order to slash taxes, mainly for the richest earners and corporations — even after factoring in increased economic growth.
Congress would slash income tax rates on those at the very top. Eliminate the estate tax entirely or exempt many rich Americans from it. Cut rates on so-called pass-through income, which is how thousands of the people at the top of the economy — from law-firm partners to corporate executives — earn their money.
And pay for it by taking away deductions relied upon across the economy.
Any way you slice it, no matter who’s doing the analysis, simple math shows all this would make the rich much, much richer, while delivering scraps if any benefits to everyone else.
Those in the top 1%, who have pocketed an increasing share of gains in recent decades, would get an 8.7% income boost by 2027, says the Tax Policy Center’s number-crunching. Those in the top 0.1%, a 9.7% boost. These in the middle and bottom fifths, a less than 1% boost apiece.
Mind you, these are percentage gains, not totals — making them especially egregious.
Nor is this the result of some income-tax rate cuts expiring over time. Even if every provision gets kept indefinitely, by 2025 more than half of households making less than $100,000 a year would see a tax increase or no meaningful decrease in taxes.
New Yorkers, who already send far more to Washington than they ever see back, would get hammered hardest by far — because the bill would eliminate entirely or sharply limit Americans’ ability to deduct their state and local taxes on their federal returns.
From Brooklyn to Buffalo, that change alone would cost us $18 billion more in federal taxes annually: That’s in excess of $2,000 per year out of the pocket of each and every man, woman and child.
States and localities — which fund the cops who keep us safe, the schools that educate our kids, our subways and buses — would get milewide holes blown in them.
Republicans, who used to encourage states and cities to manage their own affairs, set fire to their principles to light up a party for the richest among us. They must pay for this.