The American Prospect: Trump’s Big Tax Cut Is Unadulterated Trickle-Down Fundamentalism
media mentionFor instance, a report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy that examined the corporate tax filings of 258 Fortune 500 companies from 2008 to 2015 provided a snapshot of the realities of corporate taxation. The findings show that some of the country’s biggest and most profitable companies pay nowhere near the 35 percent rate, oftentimes paying closer to half that. Forty-eight of those Fortune 500 companies paid between zero and 10 percent during that period. All told, those 250 corporations enjoyed $526 billion in tax breaks over those eight years, with half of that going to the 25 most profitable—including the likes of AT&T, J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo, and Verizon.
Even more problematic, corporations aren’t taking those tax savings and investing them in growth-spurring research and development, capital improvements, and jobs. Instead, they pour their record-level profits into stock buybacks that only serve to further enrich shareholders. So who’s to say companies will take the money they would save from this rate cut to drive economic growth? The bottom line is that a straightforward corporate tax cut like Trump’s—without any provisions incentivizing smart investment—would only exacerbate economic inequality.