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"That's what a marketing blitz looks like, and there's one coming for the Trump tax plan. It will be well-produced, well-orchestrated, and completely devoid of facts."(Photo:Flickr/StockMonkeys.com/CC)
Tax Cuts for the Rich Help the Rich, Not You
Big money will pull out all the stops to sell you a tax plan that exclusively benefits the wealthy. Don’t buy it.
Sep 07, 2017
Soon you're going to hear about taxes.
You'll see images of families flashing across your TV screen while a soothing narrator assures you that the tax plan being debated in Washington really is good for you. The newspapers you read, the social media apps you scroll through, the websites you frequent, and the snippets of radio you catch will all feature ads talking about it.
That's what a marketing blitz looks like, and there's one coming for the Trump tax plan. It will be well-produced, well-orchestrated, and completely devoid of facts.
President Trump started his sales pitch for his tax cutting agenda in Missouri in August, where the assembled audience was treated to a fact-free sermon on the virtues of his plan. Gone were any specifics of what's in it, or who gets what.
Looking at Trump's tax plan from the campaign, as well as what the Republican majority in the House of Representatives have proposed, we can see the basic outlines of what's coming.
Corporations will see their nominal tax rates drop from 35 percent to 20 or even 15 percent. Individual rates will go down -- possibly for everyone, but definitely and most strikingly for the very wealthy. Overall tax revenue will tank, potentially by as much as $10 trillion over ten years.
What does all this look like in the real world?
On the corporate side, we know for sure that lower corporate taxes do not create jobs.
In the ads to come, maybe you'll see a guy in a hard hat claim that corporate tax cuts will put him back to work. He's lying.
A recent Institute for Policy Studies report looks at 92 profitable companies that already pay an effective 20 percent tax rate, thanks to loopholes. On average they've cut jobs, even as the rest of the private sector saw a 6 percent jobs increase.
On the individual side, half of the proposed cuts will go to millionaires, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Less than 5 percent go to families with household incomes below $45,000.
This is probably the biggest wealth grab in American history by the wealthy, for the wealthy. Selling it as a middle-class tax cut, regardless of the images in the ads you see, is just old-fashioned lying.
And finally there's the revenue. Trump claims his tax cuts will pay for themselves with increased economic growth. That theory's been debunked many times over and yet remains stubbornly in play.
So what happens when trillions of dollars of tax revenue get slashed?
Congress currently bans itself from passing bills that increase the deficit in one of their better acronyms -- Pay As You Go (PAYGO). That means the tax cuts Trump proposes will have to come out of public programs.
No matter how much hype you hear, you'd better believe those cuts are gonna hurt. From food assistance like the Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) program to Head Start, and from clean water protections to unemployment insurance -- it's all on the line.
It's hard to keep an eye on the truth when savvy marketing campaigns are hell-bent on deflecting your attention away from it. Don't buy it. The Trump tax cut plan is disastrous for working families and for anyone who cares about a fair and just economy.
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
This column was distributed by OtherWords.
Josh Hoxie
Josh Hoxie directs the Project on Opportunity and Taxation at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Soon you're going to hear about taxes.
You'll see images of families flashing across your TV screen while a soothing narrator assures you that the tax plan being debated in Washington really is good for you. The newspapers you read, the social media apps you scroll through, the websites you frequent, and the snippets of radio you catch will all feature ads talking about it.
That's what a marketing blitz looks like, and there's one coming for the Trump tax plan. It will be well-produced, well-orchestrated, and completely devoid of facts.
President Trump started his sales pitch for his tax cutting agenda in Missouri in August, where the assembled audience was treated to a fact-free sermon on the virtues of his plan. Gone were any specifics of what's in it, or who gets what.
Looking at Trump's tax plan from the campaign, as well as what the Republican majority in the House of Representatives have proposed, we can see the basic outlines of what's coming.
Corporations will see their nominal tax rates drop from 35 percent to 20 or even 15 percent. Individual rates will go down -- possibly for everyone, but definitely and most strikingly for the very wealthy. Overall tax revenue will tank, potentially by as much as $10 trillion over ten years.
What does all this look like in the real world?
On the corporate side, we know for sure that lower corporate taxes do not create jobs.
In the ads to come, maybe you'll see a guy in a hard hat claim that corporate tax cuts will put him back to work. He's lying.
A recent Institute for Policy Studies report looks at 92 profitable companies that already pay an effective 20 percent tax rate, thanks to loopholes. On average they've cut jobs, even as the rest of the private sector saw a 6 percent jobs increase.
On the individual side, half of the proposed cuts will go to millionaires, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Less than 5 percent go to families with household incomes below $45,000.
This is probably the biggest wealth grab in American history by the wealthy, for the wealthy. Selling it as a middle-class tax cut, regardless of the images in the ads you see, is just old-fashioned lying.
And finally there's the revenue. Trump claims his tax cuts will pay for themselves with increased economic growth. That theory's been debunked many times over and yet remains stubbornly in play.
So what happens when trillions of dollars of tax revenue get slashed?
Congress currently bans itself from passing bills that increase the deficit in one of their better acronyms -- Pay As You Go (PAYGO). That means the tax cuts Trump proposes will have to come out of public programs.
No matter how much hype you hear, you'd better believe those cuts are gonna hurt. From food assistance like the Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) program to Head Start, and from clean water protections to unemployment insurance -- it's all on the line.
It's hard to keep an eye on the truth when savvy marketing campaigns are hell-bent on deflecting your attention away from it. Don't buy it. The Trump tax cut plan is disastrous for working families and for anyone who cares about a fair and just economy.
Josh Hoxie
Josh Hoxie directs the Project on Opportunity and Taxation at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Soon you're going to hear about taxes.
You'll see images of families flashing across your TV screen while a soothing narrator assures you that the tax plan being debated in Washington really is good for you. The newspapers you read, the social media apps you scroll through, the websites you frequent, and the snippets of radio you catch will all feature ads talking about it.
That's what a marketing blitz looks like, and there's one coming for the Trump tax plan. It will be well-produced, well-orchestrated, and completely devoid of facts.
President Trump started his sales pitch for his tax cutting agenda in Missouri in August, where the assembled audience was treated to a fact-free sermon on the virtues of his plan. Gone were any specifics of what's in it, or who gets what.
Looking at Trump's tax plan from the campaign, as well as what the Republican majority in the House of Representatives have proposed, we can see the basic outlines of what's coming.
Corporations will see their nominal tax rates drop from 35 percent to 20 or even 15 percent. Individual rates will go down -- possibly for everyone, but definitely and most strikingly for the very wealthy. Overall tax revenue will tank, potentially by as much as $10 trillion over ten years.
What does all this look like in the real world?
On the corporate side, we know for sure that lower corporate taxes do not create jobs.
In the ads to come, maybe you'll see a guy in a hard hat claim that corporate tax cuts will put him back to work. He's lying.
A recent Institute for Policy Studies report looks at 92 profitable companies that already pay an effective 20 percent tax rate, thanks to loopholes. On average they've cut jobs, even as the rest of the private sector saw a 6 percent jobs increase.
On the individual side, half of the proposed cuts will go to millionaires, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Less than 5 percent go to families with household incomes below $45,000.
This is probably the biggest wealth grab in American history by the wealthy, for the wealthy. Selling it as a middle-class tax cut, regardless of the images in the ads you see, is just old-fashioned lying.
And finally there's the revenue. Trump claims his tax cuts will pay for themselves with increased economic growth. That theory's been debunked many times over and yet remains stubbornly in play.
So what happens when trillions of dollars of tax revenue get slashed?
Congress currently bans itself from passing bills that increase the deficit in one of their better acronyms -- Pay As You Go (PAYGO). That means the tax cuts Trump proposes will have to come out of public programs.
No matter how much hype you hear, you'd better believe those cuts are gonna hurt. From food assistance like the Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) program to Head Start, and from clean water protections to unemployment insurance -- it's all on the line.
It's hard to keep an eye on the truth when savvy marketing campaigns are hell-bent on deflecting your attention away from it. Don't buy it. The Trump tax cut plan is disastrous for working families and for anyone who cares about a fair and just economy.
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