Republican Tax Plan Literally Benefits Only Millionaires

The folks at the Tax Policy Center have released a preliminary analysis of the Republican tax cut plan, and it’s about what you’d expect:

The bottom line—tiny benefits for ordinary people, huge benefits for the rich—is pretty normal for Republican tax plans. What’s astonishing, I guess, is how far up the income scale you have to go before you leave the “ordinary person” category. If you make less than $300,000, you get a tiny pittance—less than a thousand dollars. Even folks who make $700,000 don’t get much: less than a 2 percentage point change, which works out to about $7,000.

To get any real benefit, you literally have to make a million dollars a year. That’s the point where the tax break really produces any benefit: a reduction of 6-7 percentage points, or $100,000+. Republicans just don’t care about anyone making less than that.

But here’s another chart. It’s kind of odd:

Once you factor in everything, including the elimination of the state tax exemption and the elimination of the estate tax, TPC estimates that the individual tax plan raises more money than the current tax structure. The deficit-busting stuff comes solely from the business tax side of things. This means that most of the benefit to the rich also comes from the change in business taxes.

I would really like to see a TPC estimate of just the individual tax changes. I suspect the distribution chart would look like a U. The elimination of the state tax deduction wouldn’t affect the poor and working class, who mostly just take the standard deduction. It would start to hit at upper middle class levels, and would probably make the tax plan a net negative for them. At the very top, it would cut a bit off the benefit, but the elimination of the estate tax would make up for it.

How about it, TPC? Can you do a microsimulation of the individual and business taxes separately? I’m genuinely curious to see who benefits most from each one.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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