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Dear John,
The Trump tax cuts were a YUGE scam.
The ONLY major legislation Trump passed as president was the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. It permanently slashed corporate taxes, and temporarily cut income tax rates (mostly for the rich) through 2025. The results were worse than we could have imagined.
Trump claimed the tax cuts would lead to corporations hiring more workers and increase household incomes by $4,000. But what actually happened?
How YUGE was the Trump tax cut scam? Check out this week’s video to see! Then share it with anyone who you want to encourage to VOTE by November 5, and let’s end this trickle-down hoax once and for all!
The actual upshot was this: AT&T saw its overall federal tax bill drop by 81%. It spent 31 times more on dividends and stock buybacks to enrich wealthy shareholders than it paid out in taxes. Meanwhile, it slashed over 40,000 jobs.
And AT&T wasn’t the only one. America’s biggest corporations didn’t reward workers. Instead, they increased their stock buybacks and dividends. And those executives kept more of their increased income because Trump’s tax cuts for individuals were heavily skewed toward the rich.
How about middle-income families? Surely they got a piece of the pie as well?
Actually, many middle-income families saw their taxes go up. And I’m wondering, did you see that $4,000 raise?
The tax cuts have added $2 trillion to the deficit so far, but now the “party of fiscal responsibility” wants to renew them, at a cost of another $4.6 trillion over the next ten years. If Trump gets the additional corporate tax cut he wants, the cost will be another $1 trillion.
Meanwhile, the Democrats have their own tax plan, if we give them a chance this November. What would it do? Pretty much the exact opposite. It would:
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Increase taxes on the wealthy with incomes over $400,000, while cutting taxes for middle and lower-income Americans;
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Tax billionaires at least 25% of their incomes, with plenty still left over;
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Raise the corporate income tax to 28%, which is about what it was in 1990;
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Quadruple the tax on stock buybacks, to encourage companies to invest more in their workers and less on increasing their investors’ windfalls.
So, which do you want? Do we make the rich much richer? Or do we make the rich pay their fair share to provide what Americans need?
After you watch and share this week’s video, I hope you’ll VOTE for the future you want to see.
Robert Reich
Inequality Media Civic Action
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