Beneath the Surface

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Whatever else President Trump’s “tax reform” proposal is, it is a big tax cut for the wealthy (see previous post). Adding a higher bracket to the three listed in the proposal (12%, 25% and 35%) would help (and is reportedly under discussion), but other goodies for the rich would still remain, such as the repeal of the estate tax.

How do the benefits for other taxpayers compare to those for the wealthy? The Tax Policy Center combined the President’s “Unified Framework” with the House Republican leaderhip’s “A Better Way” tax plan to estimate how different income groups would fare. The researchers divided the population into five quintiles by income, and then estimated how each group’s after-tax income would be affected. They calculated that in 2018, after-tax income would rise 3.3% for the top quintile, but no more than 1.2% for any of the other quintiles. The big winners would again be the top 1%, whose after-tax income would rise by 8.5%. In 2027, the gains would be 8.7% for the top 1%, 3.0% for the top quintile, and no more than half of one percent for any of the other quintiles.

In dollar terms, the average taxpayer in the middle quintile would save $660 on their taxes in 2018 and $420 in 2027.

Why are the middle-class tax cuts so small?

The Trump tax plan adds some tax breaks, especially for the wealthy, but it also eliminates some tax benefits that go to millions of people, such as the personal exemption and the state income tax deduction.

The most obvious new benefit for the masses is the increase in the standard deduction, which would go from $6,350 to $12,000 for single taxpayers, and from $12,700 to $24,000 for married couples filing jointly. However, the elimination of personal exemptions would increase taxable income by $4,050 for each taxpayer or dependent in the household. A one-person household would gain $5,650 in deductions but lose one $4,050 exemption, coming out a little ahead. A family of four would gain $11,300 in deductions but lose $16,200 in exemptions, coming out behind.

The proposed increase in the child tax credit could offset some of the loss in personal exemptions, but the proposal did not specify the amount of the increase. The Tax Policy Center assumed that it might go from $1,000 to $1,500 per child.

Many taxpayers itemize because their specific deductions exceed the standard deduction. Under the Trump plan, there would be less to itemize. Mortgage interest and charitable donations would still be deductible, but many others would disappear, including deductions for state, local and real estate taxes. Taxpayers whose interest and charitable deductions were greater than or equal to the new standard deduction would get no benefit from it, but they could lose many thousands of dollars in other deductions and exemptions. That’s one reason why about one in every eight taxpayers would get an immediate tax increase.

The promise of growth

The President’s proposal says a lot about lowering the tax burden on the middle class and making the tax code fairer. That’s more than a little disingenuous, given that the benefits go primarily to the wealthy. But the proposal makes brief reference to another rationale, creating a “tax code built for growth.” The assumption is that tax cuts will stimulate economic activity, creating jobs and raising wages for many.

If that’s true, maybe it doesn’t matter as much how much the cuts directly benefit the middle class. Middle-income people would presumably benefit indirectly from the increase in general prosperity. Even benefits focused mainly on the rich could “trickle down” to benefit people of more modest means. The proposal can’t make that argument explicitly, since it is pretending to cut taxes primarily for the middle class. Too obvious an endorsement of trickle-down economics helped defeat Mitt Romney in 2012.  Nevertheless, it is what most Republicans still believe.

Why should tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy accelerate economic growth? Supposedly, because it will give them the means and the motivation to invest more in business expansion. The underlying assumption is that money in private hands will be used productively, while money in the government’s hands is more likely to be wasted.

Many economists have their doubts about this theory. Here are a few that I’ve heard expressed:

1. Cutting taxes to stimulate the economy may work in times of recession, but it isn’t as likely to help when the economy has been growing for some time. Instead of putting idle resources to work, the extra capital may just feed inflation. That in turn may induce the Federal Reserve to cool the economy by raising interest rates.
2. As countries go, the United States is not particularly over-taxed. The top personal rate is much lower than it used to be. The official corporate rate is high, but most companies pay far less after deductions.
3. Companies are not generally suffering from a lack of capital, but are often sitting on piles of money they are not investing productively.
4. When companies do invest in new plants and equipment, it is often in industrial robots that destroy jobs instead of creating them.
5. The government will need to pay for the tax cuts either by cutting spending or increasing borrowing. Spending cuts can cost jobs, and increased borrowing can raise interest rates and encourage Treasury bond purchases instead of more productive investments.
6. The economic data do not support the generalization that countries with lower taxes have greater economic growth.

What is more certain is that tax cuts aimed at the wealthy generate more economic inequality, and we have enough of that already.

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Last week, the Trump Administration released its tax proposal, titled “Tax Reform: Unified Framework for Fixing Our Broken Tax Code.” Many observers have characterized it as short on reform but long on tax cuts, especially for the wealthy. I agree with them.

Although it is a little more fleshed out than the vague outline the administration released earlier, the proposal still leaves a lot of specific details up to Congress. Although it would reduce the number of personal income tax brackets from seven to three, it does not specify the thresholds for the new brackets; nor does it specify the size of the increased child credit that will replace the personal exemption for dependents. The White House has used the lack of detail to deflect criticism, claiming that the critics don’t know enough yet to assess the impact on taxpayers at different income levels.

However, that hasn’t stopped the President and his supporters from making some sweeping claims of their own about who will benefit most. The stated goals include “tax relief for middle-class families” and “tax relief for businesses, especially small businesses.” They say nothing about benefits for the wealthy. Trump himself claims that the plan will “put more money into the pockets of everyday hardworking people,” and that “I don’t benefit” from the changes. That may be the biggest falsehood he has ever told, and that’s saying a lot.

The proposal would cut taxes for the wealthy in at least five ways.

Personal income tax rates

The current law taxes personal income in seven income brackets, at rates ranging from 10% to 39.6%. The proposed system would have only three rates: 12%, 25% and 35%. Immediately we can see that top incomes get a reduction, although it is less clear than lower incomes do.

Although the thresholds for the new brackets are not definite, the analysis by the Tax Policy Center made the reasonable assumption that they will resemble the thresholds proposed by House Republicans in their 2016 tax plan, which Donald Trump praised when he was running for President. Based on those thresholds and other features of the proposal, the Center estimated how taxpayers in each of the five quintiles of income would be affected. (Quintiles are not the same as tax brackets, but just divisions of the population into fifths.)

In 2018, when the plan is assumed to go into effect, taxpayers in the top quintile would average a tax cut of $8,470, and they would receive 74.5% of all the tax cuts distributed. Taxpayers in the middle quintile would get an average tax cut of only $660. Even more startling, the richest 1% of taxpayers would get an average tax cut of $129,030, and by themselves get 53.3% of all the tax cuts.

It gets worse over time. By 2027, the average cut for the 1% would reach $207,060 while the average cut for the middle quintile would fall to $420. By then 79.7% of all the cuts would be going to the 1%. (Why one group’s tax cut goes down while another’s goes up has to do with how various features of the tax code are indexed for inflation.)

The Trump plan includes a rather vague remedy for this apparent unfairness: “An additional top rate may apply to the highest-income taxpayers to ensure that the reformed tax code is at least as progressive as the existing tax code and does not shift the tax burden from high-income to lower- and middle-income taxpayers.” Given that almost everything in the plan favors the wealthy, translating this pledge into reality will be a very tall order, and one that Congressional Republicans are unlikely to have any enthusiasm for carrying out. (I have been reading Jane Mayer’s Dark Money, which makes a pretty good case that today’s Republican Party pursues an agenda largely dictated by their richest donors.) The leadership is prepared to pass the bill entirely with Republican votes, using the budget reconciliation process to rule out a filibuster by Senate Democrats.

Corporate tax rates

The proposal would lower the corporate tax rate from 35% to 20%. This is also a benefit mainly for the wealthy, for two reasons.

The Congressional Budget Office, US Treasury, and the Tax Policy Center agree that the owners of capital bear most of the burden of corporate taxes, with only an estimated 19-25% falling on workers.

Although many workers own a small amount of corporate stock in their retirement plans, most stock ownership is in the hands of the richest 10% of the population. Less for Uncle Sam means more for the stockholders.

Pass-through business tax rates

Small businesses such as sole proprietorships, partnerships and S-corporations pass through their income to their owners, who pay taxes on it at individual rates as high as 39.6%.

The proposal would tax such pass-through income at a maximum of 25%. However, the great majority of small business owners already pay 25% or less because their income doesn’t exceed the individual threshold of $91,000 or the married threshold of $153,100. According to the New York Times, the effective tax rate for sole proprietors is only 13.6% now. The benefits of this tax cut would go exclusively to owners with higher incomes.

The Trump framework promises “tax relief for businesses, especially small businesses,” but it would more accurately read “especially large businesses.”

Alternative Minimum Tax repeal

The AMT is an alternative tax calculation that high earners with many deductions must complete in order to keep them from avoiding their fair share of taxes. The little bit we know about Trump’s own taxes reveals that he would have paid $31 million less in taxes in just one year (2005) if it weren’t for the AMT. Repealing it is mostly another gift to folks like him.

One can argue that if the new tax law succeeds in its goal of “providing greater fairness for all Americans by closing special interest tax breaks and loopholes,” then the Alternative Minimum Tax will be less necessary. On the other hand, one could argue that it may be more necessary than ever, given all the other tax breaks for the rich in the plan.

Estate tax repeal

The estate tax has already been “reformed” to the point that it only applies to estates valued over $5.49 million. Abolishing the estate tax would benefit only the wealthy, especially people as wealthy as Trump himself, whose estate has been estimated at several billion dollars. Trump has claimed that the repeal would primarily benefit farms and small business owners, but the Tax Policy Center found that less than 1% of the estate tax revenue comes from that group.

And for the rest of us…?

Even without many of the details worked out, the wealthy appear to be the overwhelming beneficiaries of the tax proposals, which are mostly just tax cuts for them. The benefits for the middle class are smaller and more uncertain. I will elaborate on that in the next post.

Continued