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Sorry, middle-class America—you were always just an afterthought in the Republicans’ trillion-dollar tax scheme. A new report from Joint Committee on Taxation shows the nation's wealthiest stand to gain the most from the GOP's tax deduction for "pass-through" businesses, Donald Trump included. Vox writes:
The committee estimates that the owners of pass-through entities — companies organized as sole proprietorships, partnerships, LLCs, or S corporations that don’t pay corporate income taxes — will save $40.2 billion in 2018 thanks to the tax bill.
Of that total, $17.4 billion will go to individuals and households making more than $1 million per year. (Revenue estimators are based on tax returns, so a married couple filing jointly is one taxpayer, and a married couple filing separately are two.) (emphasis added)
By 2024, the committee estimates pass-throughs will save $60.3 billion on taxes via the new law. More than half of the benefit — $31.6 billion — will go to individuals and households earning more than $1 million.
The GOP's tax scam continues to slide in the polls since getting a boost after an initial round of one-time bonuses issued in early 2018. In mid-April, Gallup found that a majority of Americans—52 percent—disapprove of the law while only 39 percent approve of it. That tracks almost perfectly with an NBC News/WSJ poll released the same day.
Just 39 percent foresee a positive impact from a stronger economy, more jobs and more money in their pockets; 53 percent foresee a negative impact from higher deficits and disproportionate benefits for the wealthy and big corporations.
Looks like 53 percent of Americans didn’t need a fancy report to know who was on the losing end of the GOP tax law. But guess who was on the winning end?
The vast majority of US businesses are pass-throughs, including those owned by President Donald Trump — his Trump Organization is structured as a collection of pass-through entities.