Monday, February 8, 2021

The Truth About Trump and Taxes on the Rich


The idea that when Donald Trump was in the White House he gave big tax breaks to the rich doesn't fit the facts.

Erica York at the Tax Foundation (via WSJ) reports:

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has released data on individual income taxes for tax year 2018, showing the number of taxpayers, adjusted gross income, and income tax shares by income percentiles. The new data shows how taxes changed in the first tax year after passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) in December 2017.

The data shows that the U.S. individual income tax continued to be progressive, borne primarily by the highest income earners...

The share of reported income earned by the top 1 percent of taxpayers fell slightly, to 20.9 percent in 2018 from 21 percent in 2017. [BUT] Their share of federal individual income taxes rose by 1.6 percentage points to 40.1 percent.

Since 2001, the share of federal income taxes paid by the top 1 percent increased from 33.2 percent to a new high of 40.1 percent in 2018.

Here is a chart outlining the situation, Trump was no help to the rich when it came to taxes: 


-RW

5 comments:

  1. The middle three lines have their labels switched. Switch 5-10% up two lines, the others down one line each.

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  3. Employment picture under Trump was unbelievably good. The bottom half of the population was doing extremely well. Benefits starting on day one. Health insurance on day one. Somebody with no skills and no education could easily command $40,000 a year. I hope will see that picture again but I’m not so sure we will. It was a beautiful glimpse of what America should be.

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    1. Yeah, if you don't include the COVID-19 panic which he initially encouraged and resulted it major parts of the economy under lockdown. Not to mention the price inflation at the consumer level that is about to hit as a result of the mad money printing under his watch.

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  4. The federal income tax payments are not the entire story and never have been. What the wealthy extract on the back end in government contracts, subsidies, federal mineral rights leases, monetary policy, and much much more is what matters. If some wealthy person pays say 30 million dollars in federal income tax but gets a $100 million in personal net benefit from the federal government he's up $70 million. If his taxes go up a full third to $40 million but his net benefit increases a third as well he's doing better than before.

    The wealthy insiders when playing the game correctly will not pay taxes in the net but receive them.

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