ProPublica scored a fantastic scoop when it obtained and meticulously analyzed 15 years of raw income tax data on the wealthiest Americans. This leak of Internal Revenue Service records is by far the biggest and most important tax news in the 55 years that I’ve reported on taxes.
Thanks to the leaker, we now know beyond any doubt that the endless claims that America has a progressive income tax system are bunk. A progressive system means that the more you make, the greater the share of your income you pay in taxes. Back in 2005, I got the George W. Bush administration to acknowledge that the system stops becoming progressive near the top.
But, unfortunately, ProPublica shows that it’s even worse than what I reported back then. Continue reading.
The bipartisan congressional leadership and White House reached a two-year budget deal on Monday, seemingly averting another government shutdown and preventing a default on the national debt that has grown to an all-time high under President Donald Trump.
But despite previously backing the 2017 tax cuts for the rich that have helped fuel the largest monthly budget deficits in American history, several self-styled deficit hawks in Congress are now signaling their opposition based on claims of fiscal conservationism.
The deal — which Trump praisedon Twitter as “a real compromise in order to give another big victory to our Great Military and Vets!” — will provide more than $1.3 trillion for agency spending for each of the next two years and suspend the nation’s debt limit until after the election. This will prevent the government from defaulting on its debt payments for the first time in history and avert some of the spending cuts agreed to in the 2011 Budget Control Act.
The New York Times disclosure that Donald Trump was able “to avoid paying income taxes” for years, while he racked up $1.17 billion in losses, tells you all you need to know about the American system of taxation that rewards risk, debt and speculation because it so completely insulates the greediest among us from the real world consequences of all three.
The Times compared their Trump file “with detailed information the I.R.S. compiles on an annual sampling of high-income earners. His core business losses in 1990 and 1991 — more than $250 million each year — were more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the I.R.S. information for those years.”
We know that our tax system taxes wages we earn at a much higher rate than the profits the rich earn off their investments. But it’s more perverse than that because it actually incentivizes the most predatory traits of vulture capitalism.
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.
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.
Steve Rattner: “Let’s Look At After Inflation. What You’ll See There Is A Different Picture. What You See There, In Fact, Wages Have Been Rising More Slowly Under Trump Than Under And That Is In Part Because Of Inflation.” STEVE RATTNER: “Well, like most things it is not completely factually correct. Let’s look at a couple of chart. First, let’s look at the chart of what’s happened to nominal wages which is wages before you adjust for inflation what you can see here is what the president is talking about, which is this little jiggle up these last couple of years if you look at it in historical context it’s a small jiggle. That’s before inflation. Let’s look at after inflation. What you’ll see there is a different picture. What you see there, in fact, wages have been rising more slowly under trump than under and that is in part because of inflation. So under trump wages have only gone up, they were flat in June, flat in July they were flat, up a little bit in August but all told only up .3% a year under trump as opposed to Obama it’s a worse situation than it was under Obama.” [Morning Joe, MSNBC, 9/24/18; VIDEO]
Steve Rattner: “It Has Left The Middle Class, Many Who Voted For Trump, Worse Off Or Not Better Off Than Before.” STEVE RATTNER: “Then let’s look at a couple of other interesting things first some new data that came out about what’s happened to different strata of our society. Not surprisingly the top 10% of Americans have actually done pretty well. You see that the 50th percentile, the median here you see the top has done pretty well you see interestingly enough the bottom has done pretty well. What you also see the middle has not done very well the top we know why that’s happened the bottom has happened because of substantial increases in minimum wages by quite a number of states. It has left the middle class, many who voted for trump worse off or not better off than before.” [Morning Joe, MSNBC, 9/24/18; VIDEO]
The following article by David Cay Johnston was posted on the DCReport.org website August 15, 2018:
Unless You Were Already Making More than $1 Million a Year
We’ve got some disappointing news for all those people who voted for Donald Trump because he promised rising wages.
While Trump keeps saying wages are rising the official government data show that’s just not true.
Consider a worker paid the median wage, half make more and half less, of $600 a week in round numbers. If she got the average 2.8% raise on July 1, her gross pay rose by a bit under $17.
The following article by Michael Madowitz and Set Hanlon was posted on the Center for American Progress website July 26, 2018:
People exit a subway into a shopping mall on June 28, 2018, in New York City. Credit: Getty/Spencer Platt
President Donald Trump recently said that the U.S. economy is “stronger than ever before” and points to his tax plan as one of the major reasons why.1 But the fact is that workers are not getting ahead in the Trump economy. Official data released in recent weeks have shown that workers’ wages are flat or even slightly down, in real terms, over the last year.2 These data fly in the face of many tax plan boosters who have claimed that the bill’s passage has already been a boon to middle-class workers.
This Friday, the U.S. Department of Commerce will release its first estimate of the nation’s economic output in the second quarter of 2018. For a number of reasons, second-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) growth is expected to be relatively strong. But one quarter’s GDP estimates hardly indicate that the economy is experiencing the sustained, broad-based growth that tax cut proponents promised would happen. Indeed, as the wage data show, the economy’s gains have not trickled down to regular workers. In fact, President Trump’s policies have only made it harder for them to get ahead.
Workers’ real wages have been entirely flat over the last year
GDP growth is the biggest-picture view of the economy; it’s important for macroeconomists who focus on long-term shifts in what the U.S. economy produces. GDP, however, is only one measure of economic progress, so its effectiveness at measuring workers’ well-being is limited. In the modern economy, benefits are shared unequally. As economic benefits have gone increasingly to those at the top, overall economic growth tells us less than it once did about how the living standards of all Americans are changing. To be sure, economic growth is an important goal, but it’s naïve to ignore the growing disconnect between changes in economic output and living standards for the vast majority of workers—especially when there are much more applicable measures of how workers are faring.
The following article of Philip Bump was posted on the Washington Post website July 25, 2018:
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) made a name for himself as a deficit hawk, but backed a tax plan and a spending bill that are ballooning the national debt. (Video: Jenny Starrs/Photo: Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
One fun thing about the Nexis online news archive at Nexis is that you can search for how many times certain people have been described in certain ways in news reports. For example, one can learn that, since June 2008, Paul Ryan has been called a “deficit hawk” more than 400 times in English-language news reports. The first included in the index is an article from Roll Call titled, “Ryan Campaigns for Fiscal Fitness” — sadly written before Time magazine snapped some of the most iconic imagesof any legislator in history.
The House speaker is a deficit hawk, you see, because of his long-standing crusade for lower federal budget deficits. It has been the cause with which the Wisconsin Republican has been associated for most of his career since getting to Capitol Hill in 1999 — cutting spending and bringing the budget under control.
However, Bloomberg’s Steven Dennis made an interesting observation about Ryan’s tenure on Twitter.
The bipartisan congressional leadership and White House 
The 
We’ve got some disappointing news for all those people who voted for Donald Trump because he promised rising wages.