(Chart created by Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.)
If you're part of a two-child family that pulls in $850,000 a year, the tax reform proposed in Republican budget passed by the House
would add $61,200 to your take-home income this year. However, for 95 percent of the population, whose median household income is 18 percent less than that proposed windfall addition for the extremely wealthy, the tax cut would provide no benefit whatsoever.
According to the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center's calculations:
[R]educing the top tax rate to 25 percent would cut tax revenues by $2.9 trillion over the coming decade. Virtually all of the tax savings from that change would go to households making upwards of $200,000—the 5 percent of tax units who currently face marginal rates over 25 percent ... By itself, that tax cut would make the income tax decidedly less progressive than it is today.
And that $2.9 trillion would be added to the $3.8 trillion cost of making the Bush tax cuts and alternative minimum tax relief permanent. Nearly $6 trillion that, if Republicans got their way, would have to be sliced off programs that mostly benefit low- and middle-income Americans who will get no benefit from lowering the top tax bracket. Republicans: Determined to screw you coming and going. All of it couched in the benign language of frugality and fiscal responsibility.