Tag: Trump wealthcare

Trump Tax Cut Saved Billions For Banks That Cut US Jobs

Donald Trump promised the 2017 Republican tax law would create jobs and support the middle class. Instead, six big banks have pocketed an additional $32 billion in savings — while cutting more than 1,000 jobs — over the past couple of years as a result of that law, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

Bloomberg calculated the additional savings from the GOP tax law by looking at the tax rates banks paid before the 2017 law (30 percent) to the rates the banks paid after the law went into effect (between 18 percent and 20 percent). The banks saw an additional $14 billion in profits in 2018, then another $18 billion in additional profits in 2019.

In the meantime, the banks also cut their workforce by a combined 1,200 jobs by the end of 2019. Continue reading.

Treasury Inspector General Probes Trump Tax Cut Abuse

The Treasury Department’s inspector general is looking into the opportunity zone program following stories by ProPublica and The New York Times about how the tax break meant to help the poor had been manipulated by billionaires.

The development, which was first reported by NBC News, comes after three congressional Democrats wrote to Treasury’s inspector general in October asking for the probe and citing the ProPublica and Times stories.

“We are conducting an inquiry, and expect to complete our work and respond to the Congressional requesters in early spring,” Deputy Inspector General Richard Delmar said in a statement. Continue reading.

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

The Trump Tax Cuts Were A Mammoth Fraud

Decades from now, many Americans will have to consult history books to gain an appreciation of the lowest point of Donald Trump’s presidency: his impeachment. But they will be able to feel the effects of his highest point: the 2017 tax bill, which he signed into law two years ago Sunday. That’s because they will still be paying for it.

Trump and his party took great pride in enacting the biggest tax overhaul in a generation. “It’s going to be a tremendous thing for the American people,” the president exulted. But like most things he says, that claim was unfounded. The package turned out to be an extravagant mirage.

Americans thought they got a tax cut. What they really got was a tax increase that hasn’t yet taken effect. When you cut taxes but don’t cut spending to match, as the Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman often noted, you are not cutting taxes but merely delaying them. And total spending has not been reduced; it has been raised.

Continue reading

Two years in, Trump tax cuts face big test with reelection bid

The Hill logoTwo years after President Trump signed his tax cut legislation into law, the measure has not become a runaway hit with the public, posing a potential challenge for his reelection bid as workers say they haven’t seen much of a benefit. 

Democrats believe that their calls to roll back the 2017 law and raise taxes on the wealthy will resonate with voters and help them win back the White House next year.

“We have to eliminate [a] significant number of these god-awful tax cuts that were given to the very wealthy,” former Vice President Joe Biden said during Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate.

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

Jim Hightower explains how Trump’s poverty subsidy enriches the rich

AlterNet logoYears ago, a Texas legislator who was occasionally known to take lobbyists’ cash in exchange for a vote, explained his ethical framework as opportunistic: “I seen my chances, and I took ’em.”

Likewise, such hustlers as Dan Gilbert (the billionaire founder of Quicken Loans), Michael Milken (the disgraced Wall Street finagler), Stephen Ross (a Florida real estate magnate and owner of the Miami Dolphins), and Jeff Vinik (a Tampa developer of luxury properties) have seen opportunistic chances in Donald Trump’s program of Opportunity Zone tax breaks — and grabbed them. The new tax law was trumpeted as a channel for funneling new investments into poor communities. But the billionaires — all of whom happen to be Trump’s buddies — jumped on it like chickens on a cricket.

They devoured the poor people’s tax subsidy to underwrite luxury projects they were already developing. To see two textbook cases of how plutocrats rig the system, first, consider Kevin Plank’s scam in Baltimore. He’s the billionaire owner of the sports apparel outfit Under Armour. He was struggling to market a track of vacant downtown land called Port Covington as an upscale address, and then he discovered Trump’s new tax break. But alas, Plank’s tract was not in a low-income zone, so it didn’t qualify.

View the complete November 21 article by Jim Hightower from Creators.com on the AlterNet website here.