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This country’s biggest historical challenge has been delivering this progress to all Americans, but Republicans have cut it back for everyone, retreating from many 20th century achievements in ways that will slam doors, rather than opening them, for the next generation.
10 Crazy Comparisons Showing How Much Trump and Congress Just Cut Taxes for the Rich
July 10, 2025 • By ITEP Staff
$117 billion is a big number, so we thought it could use a little context.
Top 1% to Receive $1 Trillion Tax Cut from Trump Megabill Over the Next Decade
July 3, 2025 • By Carl Davis
The Trump megabill will give the top 1 percent tax cuts totaling $1.02 trillion over the next decade. For comparison, the bill’s cuts to the Medicaid health care program will total $930 billion over the same period.
Trump Megabill Will Give $117 Billion in Tax Cuts to the Top 1% in 2026. How Much In Your State?
June 30, 2025 • By Michael Ettlinger
The predominant feature of the tax and spending bill working its way through Congress is a massive tax cut for the richest 1 percent — a $114 billion benefit to the wealthiest people in the country in 2026 alone.
How Much Do the Top 1% in Each State Get from the Trump Megabill?
June 30, 2025 • By Carl Davis
The Senate tax bill under debate right now would bring very large tax cuts to very high-income people. In total, the richest 1 percent would receive $114 billion in tax cuts next year alone. That would amount to nearly $61,000 for each of these affluent households.
Senate Republicans Rig the Rules to Make Their Tax Bill Look Responsible. It’s Not.
June 24, 2025 • By Jon Whiten, Steve Wamhoff
No matter how much Senate leadership bends the rules to make their tax cuts look better on paper, the cost and impact on the deficit remains the same under a current policy baseline. It’s a move meant to mask the true cost and push a reckless bill through.
Our tax policies enable people like Elon Musk and Donald Trump to accumulate more wealth than anyone could ever use in a lifetime. They then use it to steer elections and shape public policy to further enrich themselves and others like them. We should defeat the enormously destructive tax bill in Congress and instead craft tax policy that taxes the rich, makes our democracy more fair, and returns resources to the rest of the country.
Trump Megabill Will Encourage Dynastic Wealth Hoarding by Further Weakening the Estate Tax
May 15, 2025 • By Jon Whiten
The tax and spending megabill signed into law by President Trump on July 4 will cut nearly $200 billion from food assistance, affecting tens of millions adults and children, while providing an estate tax cut costing roughly the same amount to a few thousand people who will leave behind more than $7 million to their heirs.
The tariffs proposed by Donald Trump, which are far larger than any on the books today, would significantly raise the prices faced by American consumers across the income scale.
It’s Tax Day. You’ve Paid Your Share, but the Billionaires Haven’t.
April 15, 2025 • By Amy Hanauer
You likely had most of your federal taxes deducted from your paychecks throughout the year. This is not true, however, for mega-millionaires and billionaires, some of whom are practically running our government right now.
Senate Republicans Rig Congressional Rules to Make Their Tax Cuts Appear Cost-Free
April 4, 2025 • By Steve Wamhoff
This week, members of Congress are arguing about whether extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts would cost trillions of dollars over a decade or cost nothing.
In last night’s address to Congress, President Trump spent more time insulting Americans, lying, and bragging than he did talking about taxes. But regardless of what President Trump and Elon Musk talk about most loudly and angrily, there is one clear policy that they and the corporations and billionaires that support them will try hardest […]
The budget resolution passed by House Republicans will enrich the richest, blow up the deficit, and decimate vital public services. The budget resolution allows Congress to pass reconciliation legislation with $4.5 trillion in tax cuts that would mostly flow to the wealthiest families in the country. Congressional Republicans have no way to pay for the massive tax cuts promised by President Trump during his campaign other than to dismantle fundamental parts of the government and increase the federal budget deficit.
The Five Biggest Corporations Represented at Trump’s Inauguration Could Save $75 Billion from One Tax Break Before Congress
February 11, 2025 • By Matthew Gardner, Spandan Marasini
New financial reports indicate five of America’s biggest corporations—Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Tesla—could win $75 billion in tax breaks if Congress and the President satisfy demands from corporate lobbyists to reinstate a provision repealed under the 2017 Trump tax law.
Congress Could — But Won’t — Pass a Tax Package That Pays for Itself
January 17, 2025 • By Joe Hughes
If Republican lawmakers were serious about deficit-neutral tax reform, they would focus on increasing taxes for the ultra-wealthy and large corporations. The absence of such proposals in their plan reveals their true priority: delivering enormous tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans while average working families receive crumbs.
After the dust settles on this year’s election, one of the most pressing issues confronting the next Congress and President will be how to deal with the expiration of the 2017 Trump tax cuts and, more specifically, who will pay for the cost of extending some or all of those cuts. Among the more widely accepted ideas circulating on the right is to raise income taxes on single parents, more than four in five of whom are women and a disproportionate share of whom are people of color.
Biden Is Right: Corporate Tax Avoidance Has Big Problems That We Can Fix
April 1, 2024 • By Jon Whiten
Sensible reforms to the corporate tax system can help both crack down on corporate tax avoidance and ensure companies that are flourishing are paying their share for the public infrastructure that forms the building blocks of their success.
The House’s Debt Ceiling Smoke Screen: The GOP Budget Plan Gives Cover for Tax Cuts for the Rich
May 9, 2023 • By Joe Hughes
While it isn’t reasonable in the first place for Congress to debate whether it will pay the bills it has already incurred, some of the same lawmakers who are holding the economy hostage to exact budget cuts have decided to make the conversation even more irrational by proposing to increase deficits with tax cuts that enrich the already rich.
Reversing the Stricter Limit on Interest Deductions: Another Huge Tax Break for Private Equity
December 6, 2022 • By Steve Wamhoff
Private equity is doing fine on its own and does not need another tax break. Congress should keep the stricter limit on deductions for interest payments —one of the few provisions in the 2017 tax law that asked large businesses to pay a little bit more.
Faulty Fact Check on Tax Breaks for the Rich and Corporations
February 5, 2021 • By Amy Hanauer
When it comes to tax policy, the details are complicated, but the story is often simple. For example, President Trump’s so-called Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) disproportionately benefits the rich. This is not controversial. Yet some opinion makers with large megaphones get lost in the details and come to conclusions that only create more confusion.
Trump Says Taxes Will Be Too High on the 2% Who Pay More Under Biden’s Plan
October 22, 2020 • By Steve Wamhoff
The Trump campaign has failed to convince the public that large numbers of Americans would face tax hikes under Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s tax plan. The claim has been widely discredited. For example, ITEP found that the federal taxes that people pay directly would rise for just 1.9 percent of taxpayers in the U.S., and that number does not vary much by state. So, Fox News and other conservative voices are trying out a new argument: Biden’s tax plan would be too burdensome for that 1.9 percent.
It’s Time to Change the Tax Laws to Make Donald Trump and Corporate Giants Pay Up
September 29, 2020 • By Amy Hanauer
It’s time for a new approach. Trump’s egregious tax avoidance further exposes a system that preserves an enormous and growing economic divide. Congress has gutted IRS funding so that we don’t have the resources to audit wealthy tax avoiders. And lobbyists continue to secure giveaways for corporate clients that do nothing for our communities.
Missed Opportunity: Flimsy Paper Touts Flawed Program
August 25, 2020 • By Amy Hanauer, ITEP Staff, Lorena Roque
Republicans continue to tout Opportunity Zones as their main vehicle to assist poor people, most recently with a deeply flawed report from President Trump’s White House Council of Economic Advisors and a mention from Donald Trump Jr. in his opening night convention speech. The report purports to compare—as a way of cutting poverty—tax breaks for investors vs food, cash or health insurance coverage for struggling families.
Trump-GOP Tax Law Encourages Companies to Move Jobs Offshore–and New Tax Cuts Won’t Change That
June 2, 2020 • By ITEP Staff, Matthew Gardner, Steve Wamhoff
New tax cuts to incentivize bringing jobs back to the United States will fail. No new tax provisions can be more generous than the zero percent rate the 2017 law provides for many offshore profits or the loopholes that allow corporations to shift profits to countries with minimal or no corporate income taxes.
Addressing the COVID-19 Economic Crisis: Advice for the Next Round
April 7, 2020 • By Steve Wamhoff
Americans need many things right now beyond tax cuts or cash payments. But for people whose incomes have declined or evaporated, money is the obvious, immediate need to prevent missed rent or mortgage payments, skipped hospital visits and other cascading catastrophes. So, what should Congress do next to get money to those who need it?
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