Report finds tax plan benefits go mostly to richest
WASHINGTON — The new GOP tax plan delivers a big tax cut to the wealthiest Americans while some in lower tax brackets would end up paying more, according to an analysis Friday from prominent nonpartisan researchers.
The plan being touted by President Trump as the biggest tax cut ever delivers 50 percent of its total tax benefit to taxpayers in the top 1 percent, those with incomes above $730,000 a year, according to the Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution. For those wealthy taxpayers, their after-tax incomes would increase 8.5 percent next year.
For other taxpayers, though, the benefits are far more modest or non-existent, the report finds. Taxpayers in the bottom 95 percent would see tax cuts averaging 1.2 percent of aftertax income or less next year.
And about 12 percent of taxpayers would face a tax increase next year, of $1,800 on average. That includes more than a third of taxpayers making between about $150,000 and $300,000, mostly because of the elimination of many itemized deductions.
The findings came as Senate Republicans unveiled a budget plan that lays the groundwork for their effort to overhaul the nation’s tax system. Provisions in the budget would allow Senate Republicans to pass the tax package with a simple majority of votes, preventing Democrats from being able to block the legislation and rendering Democratic votes unnecessary.
The Tax Policy Center’s analysis was based on an ambitious framework released Wednesday by the Trump administration and congressional Republicans that aims to reform the loophole-ridden code and dramatically cut corporate rates, from 35 percent to 20 percent. It’s the GOP’s marquee legislative project this year, following the embarrassing failure on health care.
Trump described the tax plan Friday as a “giant, beautiful, massive, the biggest ever in our country, tax cut.”
Republicans immediately disputed the Tax Policy Center analysis.
“This so-called study is misleading, unfounded and biased,” said House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas. “TPC makes a variety of overreaching and unrealistic assumptions about policy decisions members of Congress still have to make as we draft progrowth tax legislation.”
The tax legislation can advance only after House and Senate passage of the budget blueprint. The Senate Budget Committee intends to vote on its plan next week. A companion measure is headed for a House vote next week as well.
The new budget plan would permit the upcoming tax measure to add $1.5 trillion over the coming decade to the $20 trillion national debt. The Tax Policy Center finds the GOP tax plan would reduce federal revenues by $2.4 trillion over the next decade.