Trump's $48 Billion Tax Cut for Big Corporations Would Exceed Size of K-12 Budget

As former President Donald Trump prepared to meet with top corporate CEOs on Thursday, an analysis estimates that the GOP frontrunner's proposed giveaway to the nation's most profitable corporations would exceed the size of the federal K-12 budget for the current fiscal year.

Conducted by Brendan Duke and Will Ragland of the Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAPAF), the analysis shows that cutting the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15%—as Trump and his advisers have proposed—would give the largest 100 U.S. companies an annual tax cut of $48 billion.

Those companies—including tech behemoths such as Microsoft, Apple, and Alphabet—collectively reported $1.1 trillion in profits in their most recent annual reports.

For 10 of the largest U.S. corporations—including JPMorgan Chase, whose CEO will be in attendance at a private meeting with the former president on Thursday—Trump's tax plan would deliver a $23.3 billion handout, according to the new analysis.

"This nearly $25 billion in annual tax cuts for just 10 corporations is more than double what the federal government spends on cancer and Alzheimer's research combined," Duke and Ragland noted.

During his first year in office in 2017, Trump signed into law a tax measure that slashed the corporate rate from 35% to 21% and delivered huge gains to wealthy individuals while doing little for workers. Major companies spent their windfalls from the law on stock buybacks, increased dividends for investors, and executive bonuses rather than worker wages or other business-related investments.

Earlier this year, The Washington Post reported that "Trump has told allies that he is keenly interested in cutting corporate tax rates again," and congressional Republicans are eager to pursue another round of tax giveaways should they win control of the Senate and the White House in November.

Several CEOs whose companies would benefit substantially from another corporate tax cut are expected to join Trump at a closed-door Business Roundtable meeting in Washington, D.C.

Duke noted on social media Thursday that Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins is the current chair of the Business Roundtable. Cisco would receive an estimated $1.1 billion in tax cuts if Trump and his Republican allies in Congress succeeded in lowering the corporate tax rate to 15%.

Proctor & Gamble, whose CEO chairs the Business Roundtable's Tax and Fiscal Policy Committee, would get a $660 million tax cut, according to CAPAF's analysis.

"Cutting the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15% would cost roughly $1 trillion over 10 years based on Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) and U.S. Treasury estimates," Duke and Ragland observed. "The benefits of this tax cut will accrue to a handful of large corporations: Even though roughly 500,000 companies pay corporate taxes, just 350 paid 70% of the entire corporate tax collected in 2019."