Taxes

The march is another burst of the activism that has been a regular occurrence since Trump’s election. A day after his inauguration, millions took to the streets of major cities in the United States and abroad.

Every president since Richard Nixon has released his returns, but Trump has refused. Recent polls show 74 percent of Americans want to see his returns.

“It’s about a lot more than just seeing somebody’s 1040s. It’s about whether or not the president of the United States is acting in the interest of the American people or whether he’s lining his own pockets or serving another master,” said Ezra Levin, executive director of Indivisible, one of the major protest groups that have formed in the past few months.

“Congress has the power to find out, and they’ve used it before,” including on Nixon, said Levin, whose group is among the march organizers.

Back to the gilded age

Saturday is also the eighth anniversary of hundreds of Tax Day protests that marked the emergence of the Republican-aligned Tea Party.

Although the Tea Party gathered steam around opposition to the Affordable Care Act, it emerged amid a backlash to former President Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus program.

“If you look over the long sweep of history there have been movements in both directions,” said George Yin, a former chief of staff on the U.S. Joint Committee on Taxation in Congress. He cited the Boston Tea Party and the Whisky Rebellion of the 1790s as backlashes to overtaxation. Now, the energy on taxes appears to be shifting to the progressive end of the spectrum, he said.

“Inequality has clearly grown, and it is approaching the levels of inequality that we saw during the Gilded Age,” said Yin, who teaches law and taxation at the University of Virginia. “You would think at some point there would be a turnaround on that issue.”

Today, the top 1 percent of Americans earn an average of $1.3 million a year, more than three times as much as in the 1980s, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. The bottom 50 percent average $16,000 in pretax income, the same as in 1980.

Trump has said he wants to provide “massive” middle-class tax relief. Yet according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, about half the $6.2 trillion in tax cuts Trump outlined during his campaign would go to the richest 1 percent. The middle class — defined as taxpayers in the wealthiest 20 percent to 80 percent — would receive only 20 percent combined.

Concern over inequality

Polls suggest progressives have a lot to gain in pushing the tax issue over more traditional issues such as immigration, guns or abortion. About 90 percent of voters agree that there are already too many loopholes for the wealthiest Americans, according to an early April poll conducted by the Global Strategy Group. Three out of every four voters, including half of Republicans, say millionaires and billionaires pay less than their fair share of taxes.

In the 2016 election, it was workingclass voters’ resentment over growing income inequality that drove populist uprisings in both parties — with Trump and the candidacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

The coalition marching on Saturday includes traditional Democratic grassroots groups, including labor unions, as well as newer groups such as the Working Families Party and SiX Action, which is working to push state-level legislation to increase the minimum wage and enact paid family leave policies.

More than a dozen Republicans in Congress have said Trump should make his returns public, yet they’ve avoided legislative efforts by Democrats to force Trump to disclose them.

Levin, the Indivisible organizer, said the battle over health care, which featured angry town halls and protests outside lawmakers’ offices, has shown grass-roots advocacy works.

“It was a direct result of this kind of action. If we can assert constituent power we can get Donald Trump’s tax returns,” he said.