Tax Cuts for the Rich, Tax Increases for the Rest of Us

Nov 9, 2020

Starting January 2021, close to half of American taxpayers, people with an income of $40,000 or less, will be paying higher taxes—thanks to a bill passed by Congress, and signed into law by President Trump, back in December 2017.

This law, called “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” is primarily a tax cut for big corporations and wealthy, worth trillions of dollars, for years to come. But when it was passed, there was also an initial tax cut for all taxpayers, which the politicians advertised greatly, as a justification for the tax bill.

But what the Washington politicians did not say is that they snuck in automatic tax increases for the majority of Americans—a big part of which begin to go into effect in 2021, that is, AFTER the elections.

In fact, it’s a tax cut for the rich. The richest one-third of taxpayers get a permanent tax cut. And the richer they are, the bigger a tax cut they get. But this is being paid for by the working population. By 2027, two-thirds of taxpayers (people making $75,000 or less) will be paying higher taxes than they did in 2017, before the law was enacted.

This enormous gift to the wealthiest Americans was made by a Republican Congress and a Republican president, and the Democrats attacked them for that. But don’t be fooled. Starting in 2003, over and over, the Democrats criticized Republican President George W. Bush for his tax cuts for the rich. But then in 2010, Democratic President Barack Obama, with a House and Senate controlled by the Democrats, made almost all of Bush’s tax cuts for the rich permanent.

The Republican and Democratic Parties serve one class, the capitalist class, by taking from the working population and giving it to the rich. The only difference is that some politicians are sneakier than others.