FactCheck: Trump Likely Benefits from Tax Bills
"President Donald Trump claimed that the Republican tax plans in Congress would "cost me a fortune." He has offered no proof of that, and it's highly doubtful. Several provisions of the tax bills would benefit wealthy individuals like Trump."
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Montana) holds up a copy of the 479-page GOP tax bill, complete with handwritten edits, in a video shot just before the bill passed the Senate early Saturday morning; Billings Gazette
President Donald Trump claimed that the Republican tax plans in Congress would "cost me a fortune." He has offered no proof of that, and it's highly doubtful. Several provisions of the tax bills would benefit wealthy individuals like Trump.
This isn't the first time that the president has claimed that a tax overhaul wouldn’t be good for him, or the wealthy, despite analyses of the tax plans that show most of the benefits accruing to the top income earners. But we can't say exactly how the plans would impact Trump since he has broken decades of political precedent by refusing to release his tax returns. A Democratic effort in the House to force the release of Trump's tax returns failed this week.
Trump made his latest unsubstantiated claim about the impact on the tax plans in a speech in Missouri on Nov. 29.
Trump, Nov. 29: This is going to cost me a fortune, this thing, believe me. Believe me — this is not good for me. Me, it’s not so — I have some very wealthy friends. Not so happy with me, but that’s OK. You know, I keep hearing Schumer: “This is for the wealthy.” Well, if it is, my friends don’t know about it.
The statistical odds alone are that Trump or his "very wealthy friends" will come out ahead. According to the Tax Policy Center’s analysis of the House bill, 76.5 percent of those earning more than $1 million would get a tax cut in 2018 and 70.6 percent of them get a cut in 2027, compared with current law. Under the Senate bill, more than 80 percent of millionaires get a tax cut in both 2019 and 2027, with the average cut at more than $46,000 in the latter year.
The Joint Committee on Taxation’s analyses found that more than 50 percent of the tax relief goes to those earning at least $200,000 in 2027 under the House bill, or 2025 under the Senate bill.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin acknowledged that the wealthy would have to benefit from these tax overhauls since they pay most of the federal income taxes. Mnuchin told Politico in October: "So when you're cutting taxes across the board, it's very hard not to give tax cuts to the wealthy with tax cuts to the middle class. The math, given how much you are collecting, is just hard to do."
Here's how Trump may be affected by some of the major tax provisions:
Estate tax. The clearest benefit for the Trump family would be the tax bills' changes to the estate tax, which falls on estates worth more than $5.49 million (nearly $11 million for a couple). The House bill would repeal the estate tax entirely in 2024. As we’ve written before, that would save Trump’s estate $564 million, according to a Bloomberg estimate, based on a net worth of $3 billion. Trump has said his net worth is $10 billion, and if so, the savings to his estate from a repeal of the tax would be $1.9 billion.
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