Trump campaigned on tax reform, cutting the seven tiers of taxation down to three. The big winners, of course, are the top 2% of Americans who will see their rates fall from 39.6% to 33%. This will carve a huge hole in treasury revenue, and the Edward Scissorhands approach in austerity measures planned for the rest of us may not even be enough to avoid stratospheric deficits and a ballooning national debt.
But that gaping hole in revenue can be filled in a way that will be a boon to big business and Wall Street, yet under further examination it will also lead to the worst permutation of American monopoly capitalism.
There are literally tens of trillions of dollars sitting offshore by multinationals, all sequestered there to avoid being taxed at the regular corporate rate of 35%. These funds are separate from the dividends that shareholders already have reaped as reported profits, an indication of just how well businesses are doing even with absurdly high compensation for board members and CEOs.
During the campaign, Trump proposed a "repatriation holiday" where all those trillions could be brought back all at once for the paltry tax rate of 10%. Here's how that would work out for just one company, Apple, as reported by smarteranalyst.com:
If Trump were to implement the 10% cash repatriation holiday, Apple would be able to bring home their $216 billion cash hoard while paying only $21.6 billion in taxes. The net effect would be an increase of $194.4 billion in Apple’s domestic cash reserves.
So not only does Apple save $54 billion in taxes, they'd have nearly $200 billion in money to spend on acquiring other companies or hopefully, building factories on these shores. But financial institutions like Bank of America have been stashing money overseas too. They don't build factories. They will simply continue to build a monopoly empire.
While $21.6 billion in instant treasury revenue just from Apple is obviously a net gain, lets just look at it as funneled directly back into the hands of the billionaires because that is the net result. The stock market will go bananas as profits soar, with literally tons of fresh dollars looking to invest. And if the Ryan plan on cutting capital gains tax from 20% to 16.6% is adopted, there will be even more billions in play.
Too bad all that new money will be going to the top 2%. What if it were to be put towards Medicare for all? How about a universal minimum income? How about infrastructure? Free tuition for colleges?
No. None of those things benefit the GOP donors. They are the power brokers, the marionette masters, with CORPservative Republicans in Congress doing everything they can to feed their fix.
Oddly enough, there may be an actual trickle down effect from top to bottom. Fire hose at the top, trickle at the bottom. But as the bottom 60% struggles across the boards with all the austerity inflicted upon us, we'll take any drips we can get.