The Republican Tax Plan Prioritizes The Wealthy And Corporations Over Middle Class – And A New Poll Shows The American People Don’t Like It

NEW POLL: AMERICANS KNOW THE REPUBLICAN TAX PLAN WOULD MAINLY BENEFIT THE WEALTHY – AND SAY IT WOULD NOT REDUCE THEIR TAXES.

According to the new Quinnipiac Poll, 61% of middle class voters say the wealthy will benefit the most from the Republican tax plan – not the middle class. Only 16% of middle class voters say the Republican tax plan will reduce their taxes.

Quinnipiac Assistant Polling Director Tim Malloy: “The sentiment from voters: The GOP tax plan is a great idea, if you are rich. Otherwise, you're out of luck.” [Quinnipiac, 11/15/17]

Quinnipiac Poll: “The wealthy would mainly benefit from this tax plan, 61 percent of American voters say, while 24 percent say the middle class will mainly benefit and 6 percent say low-income people would mainly benefit.  American voters say 59 - 33 percent that the Republican tax plan favors the rich at the expense of the middle class.” [Quinnipiac, 11/15/17]

Quinnipiac Poll: “American voters disapprove 52 - 25 percent of the Republican tax plan. Republican voters approve 60 - 15 percent, with 26 percent undecided. All other party, gender, education, age and racial groups disapprove. [Quinnipiac, 11/15/17]

Quinnipiac Poll: “Only 16 percent of American voters say the Republican tax plan will reduce their taxes, while 35 percent of voters say it will increase their taxes and 36 percent say it won't have much impact on their taxes. Only 36 percent of voters believe the GOP tax plan will lead to an increase in jobs and economic growth, while 52 percent do not believe it.” [Quinnipiac, 11/15/17]

CORPORATE TAX GIVEAWAYS WON’T GROW MIDDLE CLASS WAGES 

CNBC: CEOs Raise Doubts About Gary Cohn's Top Argument For Cutting The Corporate Tax Rate Right In Front Of Him. “A meeting of CEOs might seem to be a friendly gathering place for President Donald Trump's chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, former president of Goldman Sachs. But at a gathering of chief executives hosted yesterday by the Wall Street Journal, business leaders called into question one of Cohn's top arguments for slashing the corporate tax rate to 20 percent. When one of the Journal's editors asked the crowd if they planned to up their capital expenditure if the GOP's tax plan went through, only a smattering raised their hands. ‘Why aren't the other hands up?’ Cohn asked. … There's little evidence to support the claim that tax breaks boost employment numbers. A National Bureau of Economic Research study published in 2014 found "little evidence that corporate tax cuts boost economic activity" unless implemented in a recession. Far from being short on cash, corporations are sitting on record amounts. The informal poll was not the only disappointment for Cohn on Tuesday. Another non-scientific poll conducted at the gathering found that more than half of the CEOs present didn't believe that Congress would pass a major tax bill by the end of the year.” [CNBC, 11/15/17]

NY Times: Lower Corporate Taxes, Higher Wages? Voters Are Skeptical. “Republicans argue that their plan to cut corporate taxes will increase wages for American workers. A new survey suggests even the party’s strongest supporters aren’t buying that argument.” [NY Times, 11/14/17]

THE FACTS ARE CLEAR: THE GOP TAX PLAN PRIORITIZES CORPORATE TAX CUTS OVER MIDDLE CLASS FAMILIES

USA Today: Senate Makes Tax Changes For Families Temporary, But Corporate Cuts Would Be Permanent. “Tax cuts for many families would be temporary but a cut in the top corporate rate would be permanent under a revised Republican tax plan unveiled Tuesday night by the Senate Finance Committee. The plan also eliminates the mandate, imposed under the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare, that people have health insurance.” [USA Today, 11/15/17]

Washington Post: In Political Gamble, GOP Gives Permanent Tax Cuts To Corporations, But Not People. “The essential gamble of Republican plans to overhaul the tax code is now becoming clear: Big businesses get a large, permanent tax cut, while American families receive only temporary tax relief that expires as soon as 2023 in the House bill and 2026 in the Senate bill. In the House bill, the tax increase would mostly hit moderate and middle-income families because a credit designed to help them expires after five years.” [Washington Post, 11/15/17]

Los Angeles Times:  Senate Plan Would Make Individual Tax Breaks Temporary While Corporate Cuts Would Be Permanent. “In a bid to make their proposed corporate tax cut permanent and avoid adding to the long-term deficit, Senate leaders are now proposing to have most of the expanded individual benefits offered under their plan expire at the end of 2025. The new details of the Senate GOP plan, released late Tuesday, would also effectively repeal, starting in 2019, the individual mandate under the Affordable Care Act that requires all Americans to have health insurance.” [LA Times, 11/15/17]

Vox:  Senate Republicans Are Cutting Health Care To Pay For A Corporate Tax Cut. “Senate Republicans, led by Finance Committee Chair Orrin Hatch, unveiled major changes to their tax reform bill Wednesday night that transform the bill into a trade: corporations get permanently lower taxes, paid for by tax increases and health care cuts for individuals. Under the proposed changes, the bill’s tax cuts and benefits for individual Americans would almost all sunset by December 31, 2025. That includes the increased child tax credit, the doubled standard deduction, the estate tax cut, repeal of the alternative minimum tax, and even the tax break for pass-through business income. Some revenue-raisers on the individual side, like abolition of deductions for state and local taxes and the elimination of personal exemptions, would expire at the end of that year too.” [Vox, 11/15/17]

Politico:  New Hatch Plan Makes Host Of Individual Tax Cuts Temporary. “A host of tax cuts for individual taxpayers would now be temporary, expiring after 2025, under a major revision late Tuesday to the Senate tax reform plan by Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch. It's an effort to bring the legislation into compliance with arcane budget rules in the Senate barring the legislation from adding to the government’s long-term debt.” [Politico, 11/15/17]

Washington Examiner:  New Senate Tax Bill Phases Out Most Individual Tax Cuts In 2025. “Senate Republicans revealed an amended tax reform bill late Tuesday night that would phase out the individual tax reductions in order to make the budget math work. In the altered bill released by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, all the tax breaks on the individual side of the code — including the lower tax rates, doubled standard deduction, expanded child tax credits, and tax cuts for noncorporate businesses -- would revert back in 2025. The only major individual change that would remain in place is a stingier measure of inflation that would effectively raise taxes over time by pushing families into higher tax brackets.” [Washington Examiner, 11/14/17]

Axios:  Updated Senate Tax Bill Ends Individual Tax Cuts In 2026, Keeps Lower Corporate Rate. “Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch released the revisions to the Senate tax plan tonight. The new version sunsets most of the individual tax provisions after 2025, but makes the lower corporate tax rate permanent. It also repeals the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate.” [Axios, 11/14/17]

Vanity Fair:  Republicans Solve Their Tax Math Problem By Sacrificing The Middle Class. “Last Thursday, Senate Republicans received some terrible news: their trickle-down tax bill—the one that would transfer trillions in wealth to corporate America—officially had too much red ink to pass with a simple majority. So on Tuesday night, lawmakers took a step back and decided upon some radical changes to come up with the revenue necessary to ensure the bill complies with the Byrd rule. First, as expected, they threw in a repeal of Obamacare’s individual mandate, which frees up some $300 billion over 10 years thanks to an estimated 15 million people going uninsured. But the real coup de grace was deciding to completely sacrifice the nominal tax cuts being tossed to the middle class: under changes proposed by Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, tax cuts for the middle class—as well as other individual tax cuts, plus the doubling of the standard deduction—would expire after 2025. The reduction of the corporate tax rate from 35 to 20 percent, on the other hand, would be permanent.” [Vanity Fair, 11/15/17]

Atlanta Journal-Constitution:  Revised Senate GOP tax reform bill ends many tax cuts after 2025. “Republicans in the U.S. Senate unveiled a series of last minute changes to their tax reform plan late on Tuesday night, ending all plans for individual tax cuts after eight years, while making almost all of the proposed business tax changes permanent, as GOP leaders expressed confidence that they can push a bill through the House by Thursday, and win Senate approval of a slightly different plan soon after Thanksgiving.” [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 11/15/17]

NPR:  Senate Plan Now Makes Individual Tax Cuts Temporary, Keeps Corporate Cuts Permanent. “The Senate tax overhaul plan underwent some big changes overnight. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, proposed a package of sweeping changes, including growing the child tax credit and reducing the tax penalty for not having health insurance to zero — effectively eliminating the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate. Also among the proposals: making nearly all of the tax changes for individuals temporary, while keeping major corporate changes permanent. The cuts in individual tax rates, the bump in the standard deduction, and the larger child tax credit, among other things — all these would end at the end of 2026. However, the changes on the corporate side, which are centered around a rate cut from 35 to 20 percent, would remain permanent, as would the proposed elimination of the individual mandate penalty.” [NPR, 11/15/17]

The Hill: Modified Senate Tax Bill Would Make Individual Cuts Temporary, Leave Lower Corporate Rate Permanent. “The sunset clause in Hatch's ‘modified mark’ would mean the new individual rates in the Senate bill would end 10 years after their creation. This would solve a key problem in the Senate, which would have to prevent the overall tax bill from adding to the deficit after 10 years to make the new individual tax rates permanent — and use special budgetary rules to pass the package with a simple-majority vote and prevent Democrats from using a filibuster.” [The Hill, 11/14/17]

Quartz:  The GOP Tax Plan Makes Families Pay More So Global Corporations Pay Less. “The rotten core of the US tax system is how it treats overseas business earnings. Large American companies hold nearly $1 trillion overseas, on which they can defer taxes as long as the money stays abroad. Republicans want to make that tax holiday permanent. To do so, they’ll give 14% of middle-class families earning between $50,000 and $200,000 a tax hike next year.” [Quartz, 11/15/17]

Business Insider:  Here's Why Senate Republicans Are Making Tax Cuts For Average Americans Temporary. “In a massive update to their tax bill released Tuesday night, Senate Republicans made waves by proposing in the latest version that tax cuts for individuals would be temporary. That would mean their proposals — lowered individual rates, doubled standard deduction, increased child tax credit, and repeal of the alternative minimum tax — would sunset after 2025. At the same time, the giant corporate tax cut would remain permanent.” [Business Insider, 11/15/17]

Hot Air:  Senate Tax Bill: Corporate Cuts Permanent, But Individuals … Not So Much? “The Senate has finally produced its proposed version of tax reform nearly halfway through this session of Congress, and it’s clear that Republicans in Congress don’t talk much with each other. Not only did Finance chair Orrin Hatch include a repeal of the ObamaCare individual mandate, which the House eschewed, they took the opposite approach to deficit control for reconciliation. The House made the corporate tax rates temporary and the individual tax cuts permanent.” [Hot Air, 11/15/17]

New York Magazine: New GOP Tax-Cut Plan Raises Taxes on Virtually Everyone by 2027. “But last night, Orrin Hatch took a hatchet to his party’s tax legislation, and ended up achieving the seemingly impossible: The Utah senator found a way to keep the plan’s giant corporate tax cuts permanent, make its middle-class tax cuts more generous (in the near term), and cut the overall cost of tax package to $0 in 2028. Hatch’s trick: Phase out (virtually) every tax cut that doesn’t benefit corporations in 2026, while also throwing 13 million people off of health insurance. The upshot of this is that, next year, almost no middle-income families lose out from the bill, and most upper-middle-class households come out ahead. But, when the clock strikes midnight on January 1, 2026, the middle-class tax cuts turn into a pumpkin — and President Trump’s tax plan becomes a giveaway to corporations funded by raising taxes on virtually everyone in the United States.” [New York Magazine, 11/15/17]