Report finds GOP tax plan benefits top 1%

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

The new GOP tax plan delivers a big tax cut to the wealthiest Americans while some in lower tax brackets would end up paying more, according to an analysis Friday from prominent nonpartisan researchers.

The plan being touted by President Donald Trump as the biggest tax cut ever delivers 50 percent of its total tax benefit to taxpayers in the top 1 percent, those with incomes above $730,000 a year, according to the Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution.

For those wealthy taxpayers, their after-tax incomes would increase 8.5 percent next year.

For other taxpayers, though, the benefits are far more modest or non-existent, the report finds. Taxpayers in the bottom 95 percent would see tax cuts averaging 1.2 percent of after-tax income or less next year.

And about 12 percent of taxpayers would face a tax increase next year, of $1,800 on average. That includes more than a third of taxpayers making between about $150,000 and $300,000, mostly because of the elimination of many itemized deductions.

By 2027, taxes would increase for about a quarter of Americans, including nearly 30 percent of those earning about $50,000 to $150,000 a year, and 60 percent of people making $150,000 to $300,000, according to the study.

“The number of taxpayers with a tax increase rises over time,” it said. That’s because the Republican plan would replace personal exemptions, which are tied to inflation, with some tax credits that aren’t tied to inflation.

The findings were certain to fuel the Democrats’ main attack line against the GOP plan: That it’s a giveaway to the rich at the expense of the middle class. Republicans immediately disputed the analysis.

The Tax Policy Center noted that its analysis was preliminary, based on a proposal that itself lacked key information, such as the proposed income brackets that would correspond to the three new tax rates Republicans envision replacing the current seven.