Andy PuzderNovember 1, 2020·5 min read
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden often talks about repealing President Trump’s “tax cuts for the wealthy,” claiming in a recent town hall that “about $1.3 trillion of the $2 trillion of the tax cuts went to the top 1/10th of 1 percent” of earners. But did the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) disproportionally benefit high earners? Comparing the income tax data for 2017 (the year before the TCJA became law) with 2018, clearly demonstrates that it did not.
According to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, the TCJA reduced effective tax rates “for all income groups in 2018.” Because we have a progressive tax system, high earners pay the highest rates and received the largest rate reductions. However, lowering rates for a group of taxpayers does not necessarily reduce their share of the tax burden.
Let’s look at the TCJA’s impact on the top one percent of taxpayers. In 2018, 1.6 million taxpayers reported earning $500,000 or more. While the amount all taxpayers owed the IRS in 2018 declined by $64 billion, the amount these high earners owed increased by $16 billion.
Their share of the tax burden also increased. They accounted for 22 percent of total income in 2018 (a 0.5 percentage point increase over 2017) but their share of total income taxes rose to 40 percent (a 2.3 percentage point increase).
By the way, you read that right. About 1.6 million, or one percent of all taxpayers, bore 40 percent of the income tax burden due to the federal government.
In 2018, there were about 35 million taxpayers in this bracket, an increase of roughly one million over 2017 (a growing middle class). In total, they owed $31 billion less in 2018 than in 2017. In other words, the middle class got nearly half of the $64 billion decline in taxes owed under the TCJA.
Let’s look at taxpayers making under $25,000. The number of taxpayers in this bracket was 52 million in 2018, a drop of 2.3 million taxpayers from 2017. In total, their tax liability declined 16 percent or $4 billion, from $25 billion in 2017 to $21 billion in 2018.
Their share of the tax burden also declined. Those taxpayers accounted for 4 percent of total income (roughly the same as in 2017) but their share of taxes was one percent (slightly less than in 2017).
The TCJA’s elimination of the deduction for state and local taxes (SALT) alone was responsible for $240 billion or 37 percent of that decrease. The SALT deduction primarily benefits high earners in high tax blue states. Despite claiming that he wants to increase taxes on high earners, Biden supports restoring the SALT deduction -- which would reduce them.
In reality, thanks to the TCJA, working and middle-class Americans were earning more and keeping more of what they earned following the Trump tax cuts. That meant bigger paychecks and an easier time meeting household expenses.
As a group, high earners were paying more and bore a greater percentage of the income tax burden......snip~
The truth about Trump's tax cuts by the numbers, not by Biden: Andy Puzder (yahoo.com)
So much for all that the left missed.