Tag: GOP tax cut for the rich

Under Trump’s tax bill, workers pay higher rates than corporations

AlterNet logoWorkers at some of the biggest corporations in the world are paying higher tax rates than their employers, according to a new study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

The Republican-passed tax cuts signed by President Trump in 2017 permanently lowered the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent but many companies are paying nowhere near that figure. The study identified 379 Fortune 500 companies that turned a profit in 2019 and found that the companies paid an average tax rate of 11.3 percent.

At least 91 of the profitable Fortune 500 companies paid no taxes or had a negative tax rate, including giants like Amazon, Starbucks, Netflix and General Motors. Another 56 companies paid an effective tax rate of 2.2 percent. Just 57 of the companies the study looked at paid effective tax rates of 21 percent or higher. Continue reading

AT&T outsourcing thousands of jobs despite $3 billion Trump tax cut

AlterNet logoAT&T touted President Trump’s tax cut and claimed it would result in higher wages for workers. But despite getting a $3 billion tax cut last year, the company is forcing thousands of those workers to train their own cheaper foreign replacements after signing deals with big outsourcing companies.

“Lower taxes drives more investment, drives more hiring, drives greater wages,” AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson told CNBC in 2017 as he made the rounds pushing Trump’s tax cut bill. “I know exactly what AT&T would do: We would invest more.”

Stephenson celebrated the signing of the bill by touting $1,000 bonuses for 200,000 of its workers. Continue reading

As Trump Hails Stock Market, Democrats Point to Struggling Workers

New York Times logoIn Iowa, Democratic candidates sought to undercut President Trump’s core message of a strong economy by making the case that it isn’t working for the right people.

DES MOINES — On paper, Esther Mabior should be fine. She has a degree from Iowa State University, where she majored in economics, and lives in a city where her chosen profession, the insurance business, employs thousands of people.

But Ms. Mabior, 26, can’t find a job as an insurance adjuster. And she says her own experience is a lot like the stock market highs and the ever-expanding gross domestic product she keeps hearing about: It all looks good on the surface, but deeper down things aren’t so rosy.

“There may be people doing well,” Ms. Mabior said after attending an event for Pete Buttigieg’s campaign in Des Moines over the weekend, calling herself “living proof” that as far as the economy is concerned, “it’s not that great.” Continue reading

How Democrats Can Make Trump Pay For His Tax Fraud

President Donald Trump is preparing to run for re-election by citing the strength of the American economy. But while most Americans do feel relatively at ease with the state of the economy, Trump’s major signature legislation that was supposed to trigger an economic boom — the 2017 tax cuts — is turning out to be a bust. And if Democrats want to undermine Trump’s message on the economy, they would be wise to focus on this massive failure.

Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act two years ago now, prompting reflection on how it measures up to the promises made.

Writing for  the Chicago Tribune, Steve Chapman recently declared the tax cuts “a mammoth fraud.” Continue reading

Trump’s ‘Reform’ Allows 91 Big Companies To Escape Any Federal Tax

A total of 91 of the largest companies in the United States paid zero dollars in federal income taxes in 2018 under the tax law passed by Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress.

A new analysis released by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) on Monday found that Fortune 500 companies were able to avoid at least $73.9 billion in taxes under the first year of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

ITEP’s analysis found that companies like Amazon, Chevron, Halliburton, and IBM, who do billions of dollars in sales, paid no federal income taxes. They also found that 56 companies paid an effective tax rate between 0 percent and 5 percent.

Continue reading

Company insiders are selling stock during buyback programs and making additional profits when stock prices jump. And it’s legal.

Washington Post logoIn February 2017, the company behind the hit games Candy Crush and Call of Duty signaled optimism in its future and announced a $1 billion program to buy back its own shares — and investors responded by buying heavily.

But few of them could know that as they were buying, insiders at the mobile gaming titan Activision Blizzard were selling, and taking home additional profits as the stock price jumped.

On Feb. 10, a day after the company announced the buyback plan, Bobby Kotick, Activision’s chief executive, sold nearly 4 million shares for $180.8 million. The average share price of his sales was 15 percent higher than he would have gotten before the stock rose on the news.

View the complete November 6 article by Gary Putka on The Washington Post website here.

House Dems take aim at ‘trust fund babies’ with estate tax designed to combat obscene wealth inequality

AlterNet logoCalifornia Congressman Jimmy Gomez on Friday introduced legislation in the Democrat-controlled U.S. House that aims to address “our country’s rapidly increasing wealth inequality by strengthening the estate tax and ensuring the wealthiest among us pay their fair share.”

“Trust fund babies who have done nothing to earn their wealth besides being born into the right family have no right to pay a lower tax rate on their millions than hard-working Americans do on the income that they work for.”

—Charlie Simmons, Patriotic Millionaires

The For the 99.8% Act would impose a progressive tax on the estates of the richest Americans. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, introduced the companion bill in the Republican-controlled Senate in January.

View the complete October 26 article from Common Dreams on the AlterNet website here.

2019 deficit nears $1 trillion, highest since 2012: Treasury

The Hill logoThe federal deficit for fiscal 2019 reached close to $1 trillion for the first time since 2012, according to final Treasury Department figures released Friday.

In the final accounting, the deficit came in at $984 billion, more than $200 billion, or 25 percent, higher than last year and the same figure the Congressional Budget Office projected earlier in the month.

The deficit, which is projected to grow in 2020, has only surpassed $1 trillion four times in the nation’s history, during the four-year stretch following the 2008 global financial crisis.

View the complete October 25 article by Niv Elis on The Hill website here.

No, the economy isn’t working well for all Americans — and a new survey proves it

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump has not hesitated to boast about the state of the U.S. economy, insisting that his policies have brought about an economic miracle (never mind the fact that unemployment was going way down during President Barack Obama’s second term). But two of the Democratic presidential primary candidates who are hoping to unseat Trump in 2020, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders, have repeatedly stressed that big chunks of the U.S. population are not feeling the economic recovery — and a new survey by the personal finance website WalletHub bears that out.

The United States’ national unemployment rate, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) figures, was 3.7% in August and 3.5% in September. When Obama was a lame duck in December 2016, it was 4.7% compared to 10% in October 2009 during the worst of the Great Recession. So Trump inherited an economy that was in recovery under Obama; he didn’t create an economic miracle single-handedly, contrary to what one often hears on Fox News. Further, unemployment figures don’t tell the whole story, and WalletHub’s survey underscores the fact that millions of Americans are still struggling.

According to WalletHub’s survey, released this week, “78 million Americans” say their finances are a “horror show” — that includes 34% of Millennials and 16% of Baby Boomers. Moreover, 85% of Americans, WalletHub reports, plan on spending less this Halloween compared to Halloween 2018.

View the complete October 25 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

Deficits to exceed $12 trillion through 2029: CBO

The Hill logoThe federal government will rack up $12.2 trillion in deficits through 2029, according to a new projection from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), an $809 billion increase from its last projection in May.

The CBO, Congress’s official budgeting scorekeeper, said that the deficits would average 4.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) through the next decade, a significant increase from the 2.9 percent average over the past 50 years.

Fueling the increase from May’s projection is the bipartisan deal to raise spending caps, which would add $1.7 trillion to the deficit over the course of the next decade. The projection is particularly high because the deal raised stringent budget caps that would have cut spending, meaning that the lion’s share of the projected new deficit is in comparison with scheduled cuts, not new spending.

View the complete August 21 article by Niv Elis on The Hill website here.