Chart of the Day: Here’s What Corporations Did With Their Tax Cut

The Congressional Research Service has analyzed the 2017 Republican tax bill and concluded that it had no noticeable effect on GDP, consumption, domestic investment, or wages. But wait! What about the reinvestment of overseas profits, which the act allowed companies to repatriate at a low tax rate?

One of the major sources of anticipated increased investment through supply-side effects is international capital flows….Some also argued that eliminating the tax barrier to repatriating funds (as was done with the tax revision) would lead to reinvestment in the United States of unrepatriated earnings held abroad in U.S. subsidiaries.

Let’s check! What happened to all those repatriated earnings?

Companies repatriated more than a half-trillion dollars (blue line), but reinvested earnings actually turned negative for a couple of quarters before returning to the same level as before. End result: bupkis. Nice work, Republicans.

Of course, none of the Republican arguments in favor of the tax act were offered in good faith anyway, so it’s hardly a surprise that it had little to no effect on the economy. As the report puts it, “Fiscal stimulus is limited in an economy that is at or near full employment.” The real goal of the tax act was to reduce the taxes of corporations and rich people. Rep. Chris Collins explained things elegantly: “My donors are basically saying, ‘Get it done or don’t ever call me again.'”

So they got it done. Now their donors are happy and will continue contributing money to Republican candidates. What’s not to like?

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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