| | | One messaging problem for Trump on taxes is that he tends to overpromise, as he’s done in repeatedly pledging victory over Covid-19. While running for president in 2015, he told Bloomberg he would cut taxes on the middle class but raises them on himself and other rich people: "That's right. That's right. I'm OK with it,” he said. “You've seen my statements, I do very well, I don't mind paying some taxes.” That, of course, is not the way things turned out—even setting aside the fact that Trump used accounting maneuvers to lower his own federal income taxes in 2017 to $750, according to documents obtained by the New York Times.
Liberal critics of the Trump tax cuts focus less on individual tax brackets and more on the overall impact of the law, including its big tax breaks for business. A report last year by the Economic Policy Institute says, “President Trump’s tax bill did not increase wages for working people, failed to spur business investments, decreased corporate tax revenues, and boosted stock buybacks in its wake.”
Deficit hawks focus on a different problem, which is that the tax cuts added to the federal debt at a stage of the business cycle when governments typically try to use a strong economy to reduce indebtedness. |
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