'No evidence' Trump tax cuts are trickling down to workers
Wall Street banks, pharmaceutical companies, and corporate CEOs have a lot to celebrate on Tax Day thanks to President Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
The vast majority of workers, not so much.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, most U.S. workers have seen little to no benefit from the GOP's $1.5 trillion Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA).
"It's Tax Day again, and there's still no reason to believe the Republicans' corporate tax cuts are doing anything for working people," Hunter Blair, a budget researcher with EPI, wrote in an analysis Monday. "With a year's worth of data in, the story remains the same—there's no evidence the corporate tax cuts in the TCJA have trickled down to workers."
"The TCJA is set to exacerbate decades of rising economic inequality," said Blair. "The bill blew apart the individual and corporate tax codes with egregious new loopholes tailor made for the rich and big corporations."
"And the data offers no reason to think any of this will start trickling down to typical workers," Blair added.
Lawrence Mishel, a distinguished fellow at EPI, added in a blog post Monday that the average worker bonus in 2018 "was just $0.01 higher than in 2017."
"This is not what the tax cutters promised, or bragged about soon after the tax bill passed," wrote Mishel. "They claimed that their bill would raise the wages of rank-and-file workers, with congressional Republicans and members of the Trump administration promising raises of many thousands of dollars within 10 years."
"The White House contention that corporate tax cut-inspired widespread provision of bonuses that led to greater paychecks through bonuses or wage increases for workers is not supported by the BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation data," Mishel concluded.
This #TaxDay2019 remember even if you paid just a dollar in income tax in 2019, you paid MORE in taxes than Amazon… https://t.co/ZNkuit3IOE— Unrig Our Economy (@Unrig Our Economy) 1555331934
Trump promised that corporations would use their tax cuts to give working families a $4,000 pay raise. It’s… https://t.co/ZlQYIqstJj— Americans For Tax Fairness (@Americans For Tax Fairness) 1555344780
Big Pharma tax breaks under the GOP tax law: -Pfizer: $2.8B -Johnson & Johnson: $2.5B -Merck: $1.2B -Abbott: $4… https://t.co/LEuWlVkuHP— Public Citizen (@Public Citizen) 1555285200
Patriotic Millionaires—a group of rich Americans that launched a campaign last week calling for higher taxes on the wealthy—added, "If you're curious where the promised $4,000 raise from the GOP tax cut went, look no further than the bank accounts of the wealthiest Americans."
"It wasn't a middle class tax cut," the group concluded, "it was a scam."
