Tag: GOP supply side economics

Profitable Giants Like Amazon Pay $0 in Corporate Taxes. Some Voters Are Sick of It.

AKRON, Ohio — Colin Robertson wonders why he pays federal taxes on the $18,000 a year he makes cleaning carpets, while the tech giant Amazon got a tax rebate.

His concerns about a tilted economic playing field recently led Mr. Robertson to join the Akron chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. At a gathering this month, as members discussed Karl Marx and corporate greed over chocolate chip cookies, it wasn’t long before talk turned to income inequality and how the government helps the wealthy avoid taxes.

“One of the benefits of taxation is taking it and using it for the collective good,” said Mr. Robertson, 25, comparing his minimal income to the roughly $150 billion net worth of Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive and the world’s richest person.

View the complete April 29 article by Stephanie Saul and Patricia Cohen on The New York Times website here.

Even millionaires are ashamed of their absurdly low tax bills

Fats Domino sings: “I found my thrill, on Blueberry Hill.” Maybe, but America’s richest corporate powers know precisely where to find their thrill: On Capitol Hill.

They rushed there in 2017 with a passion hotter than high school love, spewing the pheromones of campaign cash into the Republican congressional caucus. Sure enough, the GOP Congress came through for the corporations, satisfying their lust to have their tax rate lowered from 35 percent to 21 percent — lower than a modest-income working stiff pays.

Actually, the corporate elites hadn’t been paying anywhere near 35 percent, since they used dozens of loopholes to cut their average rate to about 13 percent. Yet Republican lawmakers coddled these privileged giants with a rate cut — plus, they kept intact most of those gaping loopholes. Thus, many corporate behemoths paid $0 in federal taxes this year. Or less!

View the complete April 27 article by Jim Hightower on the AlterNet website here.

On Tax Day, Still ‘No Evidence’ Trump Tax Cuts Are Trickling Down to Workers

If you’re curious where the promised $4,000 raise from the GOP tax cut went, look no further than the bank accounts of the wealthiest Americans.”

Wall Street banks, pharmaceutical companies, and corporate CEOs have a lot to celebrate on Tax Day thanks to President Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

The vast majority of workers, not so much.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, most U.S. workers have seen little to no benefit from the GOP’s $1.5 trillion Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA).

View the complete April 15 article by Jake Johnson on the Common Dreams website here.

Furious taxpayers rain hell on GOP after tweet touting Trump’s tax plan hilarious backfires

The Republican Party on Monday tried to celebrate Tax Day by touting the purported effectiveness of its signature tax cut — but they were quickly hit with blowback from angry taxpayers.

In a tweet posted early Monday morning, the GOP boasted that its tax cuts “have put money back into the pockets of hardworking Americans so that they can spend it on things that actually matter to them and their families.”

However, many angry Americans shot back at the GOP and said they’d been stunned to find that they actually owed the government money after the IRS put too much money in their paychecks as a way to juice the economy.

View the complete April 15 article by Brad Reed on the AlterNet website here.

Poll: Only 18 percent say they are paying less under Trump tax law

Less than one in five registered voters say they paid less in taxes during the first year of President Trump‘s landmark tax law, a Hill-HarrisX poll released Monday finds.

Only 18 percent of respondents say they are paying less in federal taxes for 2018 compared to 2017 in the survey, which was taken ahead of the April 15 tax deadline.

A majority said their 2018 tax bill was about the same or higher compared to 2017. Thirty-two percent said their federal taxes were higher under the Trump tax law. A plurality of respondents, 36 percent, said they owed about the same in federal taxes compared to the previous year. Fourteen percent said they were not sure whether they paid more or less.

View the complete April 15 article on The Hill website here.

Trump tax ‘cut’ actually increased taxes for 10 million American families, report finds

A Center for American Progress estimate found that 10,260,263 families saw their taxes go up, thanks to the 2017 law.

Donald Trump ran in 2016 promising that every American would receive a tax cut. But he has already raised taxes on an estimated 10 million families, according to a new analysis.

The Center for American Progress released its calculations on Friday, based on datafrom the non-partisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. It found that 10,260,263 American families saw a tax hike last year, thanks to the president’s 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act. (ThinkProgress in an editorially independent news site housed at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.)

“Everybody is getting a tax cut, especially the middle class,” Trump told CNN in May 2016.

View the complete April 12 article by Josh Israel on the ThinkProgress website here.

Twice as many companies to pay zero taxes for 2018 due to Trump’s tax gift to the rich and powerful

You may owe taxes on your salary over the last year, but many Fortune 500 companies won’t pay squat on billions in profits, according to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

The 2018 tax rate for at least 60 profitable Fortune 500 companies will be virtually nothing or even less—which is about double the number of companies reporting that rate on average in an analysis of previous years. Collectively, the 60 companies are skating on some $79 billion in pretax income. “Instead of paying $16.4 billion in taxes, as the new 21 percent corporate tax rate requires, these companies enjoyed a net corporate tax rebate of $4.3 billion,” ITEP wrote. Here’s just a glimpse of the billion-dollar companies that were able to zero out their federal income through the loopholes Donald Trump and the GOP built into their tax giveaway to the rich and powerful.

  • Amazon
  • Chevron
  • Deere
  • Delta Air Lines
  • General Motors
  • Halliburton
  • Honeywell International
  • Molson Coors
  • Prudential Financial

Continue reading “Twice as many companies to pay zero taxes for 2018 due to Trump’s tax gift to the rich and powerful”

Here are 5 really bad surprises buried in your tax return — courtesy of Donald Trump

The first hit you’re going to take is from inaccurate withholding tables, from there it just gets worse.

The weeks leading up to April 15th often are filled with anticipation and one looming question — will I have to stroke a check to the IRS or will I receive a welcomed tax refund? Oftentimes, it’s not until the email or call is received from your CPA that the anxiety produced by tax season begins to subside.

As we near the tax filing “home stretch,” we wanted to suggest that in this first year of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, you may want to brace yourself for some surprises. While many provisions of the Act were designed to reduce overall income taxes, other aspects of the new laws could actually cause that number to go up. If that unwelcome surprise happens to you, here’s a list of possible explanations:

“You’re under-withheld”

Anyone involved in tax preparation faced numerous delays in the rollout and understanding of how the new tax provisions were applied.  These delays impacted the availability of the tax withholdings tables used to guide payroll deductions.

View the complete April 3 article originally posted on Salon on the AlterNet website here.

The government set a record with a $234 billion deficit in February

The U.S. government posted the largest monthly budget deficit in American history in February, hitting a dramatic milestone as tax revenue lags and spending levels continue to skyrocket.

The government spent $234 billion more than it brought in through tax receipts last month, much more than the deficit levels hit during the global financial crisis.

Senior Treasury Department officials said the ballooning deficit was largely due to huge spending increases that the White House and Congress agreed to in the past two years, as defense spending and money for other programs went up sharply. But tax receipts are effectively flat since last year, an unusual phenomenon in a growing economy.

View the complete March 22 article by Damian Paletta and Erica Werner on The Washington Post website here.