Trump supporters greet tax law with shrugs and measured hope

WEST DES MOINES, IOWA » Ask someone like Sam Banks about the tax plan President Donald Trump signed into law Friday, and you hear something other than the effusive joy Republicans in Congress put on display this week.

The $1.5 trillion plan cuts taxes broadly while bestowing its richest benefits on companies and wealthy individuals. It is the first major legislative achievement for a president who rode to the White House with the fullthroated backing of people like Banks who felt America’s economic policies needed a drastic overhaul.

Yet Banks, a 50-year-old farmer in sparsely populated southwestern Iowa, regards the tax plan with a blend of indifference and uncertainty tinged with hope.

“They had to do something, though it took them long enough,” Banks said of the president and the Congress his party fully controls. “It’s going to help the companies. It’s got to help me a little, I suppose.”

In pockets of the country where Trump scored big with voters last year, the response to the tax overhaul is mainly a muted one. You’ll get a few blank stares, some confusion and a bit of hedged optimism. What you won’t hear is excitement.

Nearly all taxpayers will receive an initial tax cut. But an analysis by the Tax Policy Center shows that the gains favor the wealthy. For households earning between $48,600 and $86,100, the average tax cut in 2018 will be $930. But the top 1 percent of earners — with incomes above $732,800— will enjoy an average tax cut next year exceeding $50,000.

And companies will benefit from having their top marginal tax rate slashed to 21 percent from 35 percent — a permanent reduction unlike the tax cuts for individuals and families that expire after 2025.

“This is not a bill written with the core Obama-Trump voters in mind,” said Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington. “In the short term they get a little but not a lot.”

One thinking behind the corporate tax cuts is that they will turbo-charge business activity and that ordinary Americans will, in time, receive benefits in the form of better jobs and higher wages.