Surprise: Trump's Latest Tax Plan Would Benefit the 1%, Burden the Poor

Donald Trump's latest tax proposals would give the biggest windfalls to the richest households in the U.S. and raise the debt by $20.9 trillion by 2036, according to a new analysis by the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center (TPC).

The Republican presidential nominee would cut taxes by $6.2 trillion over the next decade, with 47 percent of all cuts next year going to the top 1 percent, the analysis found. By contrast, TPC found, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's plan would increase revenue by a net $1.4 trillion over the next decade, and nearly all tax hikes would go to the richest 1 percent, with low- and middle-income families seeing "small increases" in after-tax income.

And while the tax cuts in Trump's latest proposal are not as high as in his previous plans, they favor rich households and burden lower-income ones even more than the $9.5 trillion in cuts he proposed last year.

Under Clinton's plan, the top 1 percent would pay an average of $117,760 in 2017, while the top .01 percent would see an average tax jump of $805,250.

TPC director Leonard Burman called the two candidates' plans "mirror images" in an interview with Forbes reporter Janet Novack.

Novack adds: "Clinton's plan also takes aim at certain groups of wealthy folks. It closes the 'carried interest' loophole that reduces taxes for hedge fund and private equity managers and limits 'like kind' exchanges, which allow real estate developers and investors to defer capital gains taxes, in some cases indefinitely. (It's hard to say how that would affect Trump, since he hasn't released his tax returns; a leaked 1995 Trump return showing a $916 million tax loss suggests he may have paid no income taxes for nearly 20 years without needing the like-kind break.)"

Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) also recently released its analyses of Clinton's and Trump's tax plans, coming to similar conclusions. CTJ director Bob McIntyre said of the Republican nominee's proposal at the time, "To be sure, Trump's latest tax plan costs less than the initial deficit-inflating tax proposal that he laid out earlier this year. But this new tax plan is in the same spirit as Trump's initial proposal. He would cut taxes for the rich, cut taxes for businesses, provide miniscule tax cuts for lower-income groups, and then claim it's a populist plan that helps working families."