So Much Winning

Trump's tax cuts give the richest 5% big breaks — while everyone else pays more. The numbers tell a very different story than the White House

U.S. President Donald Trump has lauded the most recent tax season as a win for average Americans. His administration, too, attributes the "greater than ever before" (1) refunds to the "Working Family Tax Cuts" (2) and "the great, big, beautiful bill" (3).

Indeed, some of the changes the administration introduced promised "no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security." Spokesman Kush Desai even said in a statement to NBC (4), "[The] vast majority of working-class seniors" and the "vast majority of everyday workers" will not pay any taxes on Social Security, tipped or overtime income. In theory this should raise tax refunds.

But while Trump has said "[People] are getting so much more money than they thought," the picture he paints gets more complicated when income enters the picture.

The latest IRS update (5) shows 77.8 million returns had been processed as of March 20, 2026, with an average refund increasing from $3,284 to $3,561 — a $277 bump from a year ago. But the portion of those reaping the greatest benefits from Trump's tax changes are those earning the most, not the working class families Trump's administration is targeting in its messaging.

Here's why the catch is in the details.

The 2026 filing season changes

The Tax Foundation (6) found Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" reduced individual taxes by roughly $129 billion for 2025, noting refunds "will undoubtedly rise for millions of taxpayers."

The reality, according to the Tax Policy Center (7), is that 60% of those tax savings from Trump's sweeping changes will benefit the richest 20% of households — those earning over $217,000.

And the savings are progressively greater the higher up the income ladder you go: A recent report by the progressive-leaning Institute On Taxation and Economic Policy (8) shows that those tax cuts disproportionately benefit the richest 5%, with the top 1% receiving $117 billion in tax cuts in 2026 — part of a $1 trillion reduction over the next 10 years.

The other catch is that with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (9), Trump has also eliminated more than $40 billion over 10 years in funding for IRS tax enforcement that was earmarked specifically for investigating tax evasion by the wealthy, reports the organization.

This effectively removes disincentives and oversight for prospective tax cheats, who are also some of the wealthiest. This matters because the ROI on investigating the richest 10% (10) is $12 for every dollar spent (with some estimates going as high as $26 dollars for every dollar spent).

"We have the richest Americans who control massive amounts of the country's wealth, who are literally able to opt out of the tax system entirely. Meanwhile, anybody who earns a salary is paying a lot of taxes," Ray Madoff, a professor at Boston College Law School who studies tax policy, told NBC (4).

Similarly, many corporations will see little or no corporate income tax and tax cuts for foreign investors in U.S. businesses by $32 billion in 2026.

That leaves the bottom 95% of taxpayers, who will see tax increases on average, "driven by expanded tariffs and income tax changes." Additionally, while the OBBBA extends earlier Trump tax provisions, it also enabled the termination of Biden's health tax credit, which aimed to reduce health insurance coverage costs for Americans.

What this means is that though the average filer's return may be up by $277, this average includes high-income earners and those who see greatest tax reductions, skewing the widely-publicized angle that Trump's tax changes favor "working Americans."

The reality for the remaining 95% of Americans

Instead, middle-income Americans will see a rise in taxes by an average of $900 in 2026, the ITEP report says. And depending on where you live, this average may be higher: The middle 60% of Americans who reside in Wyoming, Nebraska and Florida will pay most (between $1,430 and $1,240 on average, respectively).

And while the "no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security" does exist, it exists with considerable caveats that aren't as well publicized. This comes down to the way the taxes are structured and that they are only partial exemptions.

"We were disappointed," Sherie Cummings, a casino cocktail waitress on the Las Vegas strip, told NBC (4). "I feel like a lot of the servers, bartenders, waitresses, tip earners were gaslit by the 'no tax on tips.'" Filing with her husband, a bartender, she expected that she'd be able to write off the entirety of the $60,000 in tips the two brought in — a sizable portion of their joint wages. Instead they discovered the "no tax on tips" was capped at $25,000.

The tax cuts also exclude large groups such as railroad workers and truck drivers from overtime tax savings, while Social Security deductions include both low and higher earners.

"There's no hiding the fact that the last year of tax policy has driven up costs for most Americans [while] slashing them for the wealthy," said Michael Ettlinger, ITEP Senior Fellow and author of the report (11). "Tariffs and other federal tax increases have blindsided middle- and low-income taxpayers while the wealthy and corporations have received a hugely disproportionate share of the enacted tax cuts."

The shadow side of Trump's tax cuts

There is a cost to the tax cuts — it's not just free money in your pocket. ITEP (8) puts this in perspective: Tax cuts are services lost for the very Americans that would benefit most from them.

The $117 billion that is staying in the hands of the top 1% in 2026 is more than the combined budgets of the Department of Education, Department of Transportation, Department of Justice, the State Department, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The cumulative deductions from the OBBBA are projected to add $4.6 trillion to the federal government's debt over the coming decade (part of a cumulative $22 trillion projected from 2025 to 2034). To offset the lost federal revenue from the tax cuts, the White House is also spending $1.2 trillion less — with the majority of the cuts coming from health care.

This has "shifted the responsibility for funding for government toward working Americans while delivering substantial benefits to wealthy individuals, corporations and foreign investors, with long-term consequences for inequality and the federal budget," the report said (11).

This ongoing debt can hit the economy through rising interest rates, high inflation and other direct cost of living consequences to many Americans. Many others are at risk of losing food assistance and health insurance benefits.

"In short, this was not the time to add $4.6 trillion in debt by cutting taxes for people and companies that don't need it," writes ITEP (8).

Read More: Dave Ramsey says this 7-step plan ‘works every single time’ to kill debt, get rich in America — and that ‘anyone’ can do it

The net impact of Trump tax cuts

The latest changes will only exacerbate income inequality in 2026, says the report (11).

Tariffs still impact the highest-earning Americans, but they take up a much smaller portion of their income. Similarly, with the latest tax changes favoring high-income households, any costs attributed to tariffs are offset by the tax cuts favoring (8) this group.

What this looks like:

• The top 1 percent gets a net tax cut equal to 0.4% of their income
• The middle 20 percent sees a net tax increase equal to 1.2% of their income
• The poorest 20 percent sees a net tax increase equal to 3.1% of their income

The 2026 ITEP report (11) found that the Trump administration's most recent tax changes have "shifted the responsibility for funding for government toward working Americans while delivering substantial benefits to wealthy individuals, corporations and foreign investors, with long-term consequences for inequality and the federal budget."

While Trump urged (1) Americans not to "spend all of this money in one place!" for many Americans, the economic reality is far bleaker, leaving them with less discretionary income this tax season — and for an increasing majority, even necessities are drifting further beyond reach.

Article sources

Truth Social (1)

U.S. Congress (2)

The New York Times (3)

NBC News (4)

Internal Revenue Service (5)

Internal Revenue Service (9)

Tax Foundation (6)

Tax Policy Center (7)

Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (8)

Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, (10)

Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, (11)

The Tyranny Of Percentages

The "average" American is getting about $350 more than last year in their tax refunds.

Yay for that. This is a good thing.

Problem:

The cost of gas, and groceries, and other goods is increasing (inflation is up around 3.3% now), and that means we're going to pay more in sales taxes.

That's kinda how percentage works.

At a total Sales Tax Rate of 6% (a low-ish average nationwide), my usual $110 in groceries costs $116.60.

Inflation pushes the cost of my groceries to $113.63, which is $120.45 with tax.

If that new total of $116.60 is what I spend every 5 or 6 days, then the $6.40 in extra tax means I'll spend almost $390.00 more this year than I did last year, and - obviously - that eliminates any gain in my tax refund, and equates to a hit on my $65,000 average income of almost a full percent.

So a "tax cut", (minus inflation, minus tariffs) means my annual income goes down - and that's just looking at the food that I can't not buy. Wanna talk about clothing? Wanna talk about having a child or two? How 'bout maintenance on your car and your house?

Meanwhile, people making over the magic threshold of $400,000 will likely not see any discernible change at all.

And don't get me started on Parasite Billionaires.

Oops

We all have to know that the Doordash Grandma thing was just a stunt, intended to show off Trump's "genius idea to get Americans out from under their horrendous tax burden" - and it flopped.

It flopped in large part because, like I said, it was recognized as a stunt, but also because we found out the lady has to drive Doordash to pay the mortgage and the ridiculous healthcare bills that are piling up from her husband's cancer treatments.

Anyway, speaking of tax burdens, we were told that everybody's tax refunds this year would be nice and plump, and they'd all be rollin' in dough that they could use to buy that new car, or put the kids through college, or take that special vacation, and blah blah blah.

Well - no - not so much.

Tax season was supposed to bring big refunds. So far they're less than expected

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Early spring means the return of warm weather and … taxes. On a recent weekend, Dan and Glynna Courter were enjoying the sun with friends over a picnic of blueberries and Cheez-Its at Birmingham's Railroad Park.

When the topic moved to how they're feeling about their tax refunds, nearly everyone at the gathering responded with a chorus of lukewarm just fines.

The lack of enthusiasm was surprising considering everyone on the picnic blanket received sizable refunds, including about $10,000 for the Courters combined. But Glynna thinks their refund wasn't that much different from last year. The couple withhold the maximum taxes from their paychecks, which helps them avoid the risk of owing taxes and leads to a bigger refund.

"We might go to a nice restaurant," Dan added, after Glynna said they'd use the refund for savings.

This is not the vibe Republican lawmakers were planning for this tax season. The White House had already declared this the "largest tax refund season in U.S. history," and so far it's on track to be, due to the Republicans' signature tax and spending law, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The White House projected the average refund "to rise by $1,000 or more this year."

But that extra refund bump has fallen short of that projection.

So far, the average refund has totaled about $350 more than last year. By early April, the average tax refund sat at $3,462, which is 11.1% higher than the same point last year, according to the IRS.

And Americans appear to be shrugging their shoulders at the tax changes. A recent survey by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank advising on federal policy, found 62% of respondents either thought the tax changes harmed them or made no difference. Even among Republicans, only 35% said the changes favored them.

"There's a bit of a disappointment in how much those refunds are," said Tom O'Saben, the director of tax content and government relations at the National Association of Tax Professionals. "People are quietly, perhaps, happy but not to the extent where I would call it significant."

Americans who owe taxes could be seeing a bigger slice of the savings

One possible explanation for the lower refunds is that the benefits from the tax law changes could be showing up more for Americans who don't receive refunds, but owe taxes. The IRS data on tax refunds this season does not factor in how much less Americans owed compared to last year.

"The evidence is stronger that more tax relief is relatively flowing to those who otherwise would owe when they file," said Don Schneider, deputy head of U.S. policy at the investment bank Piper Sandler.

But Schneider points out that owing less money is harder to notice than getting cash in hand.

"Getting it in a refund is probably more impactful, more easy to understand than having a reduction in what you otherwise would owe," Schneider said.

Higher-income procrastinators still have to file

Wealthier filers so far seem to have received larger benefits from the tax changes.

"Higher income taxpayers are much more likely than lower income taxpayers to report significantly higher refunds this year," said Andrew Lautz, director of tax policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

That's due in part to the increase in the SALT, or state and local tax, deduction cap raised by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Filers can now deduct up to $40,000 for property, sales and income taxes paid to state and local governments. The deduction primarily goes to wealthier Americans who own homes with big mortgage payments.

Since they traditionally are more likely to procrastinate sending in their returns, that could cause this year's average tax refund to grow later on, but likely still fall short of the additional $1,000 mark, Lautz said. "It is unlikely that we will see that kind of boost by the end of this."

Refunds are getting eaten up by higher gas prices

Part of the tepid response to refunds could be related to the extra cash Americans are spending at the pump.

The war with Iran has brought the average price for a gallon of regular in the U.S. well above $4. Data from the Bank of America Institute and PNC shows consumers have continued spending on gas, and depending on how long gas prices stay elevated, all of the benefits Americans received from the 2025 tax and spending bill could go solely to staying fueled up.

"The tax refund season might be very good, but it's also being offset by this price in gasoline," said Michael Pearce, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics.

Bob Jones, a retiree in Birmingham, is satisfied with his refund. He benefited from an extra deduction of $6,000 for a lot of seniors 65 and up. But the war with Iran has him worried about what that means for the price of gas, so he's put it all in savings.

"You need the savings simply for gas," Jones said.

About Those Tariffs

via google:

A Kiel Institute for the World Economy study found that American importers and consumers bear nearly all (96%) of the costs from recent U.S. tariffs, contradicting claims that foreign producers pay, with foreign firms absorbing only about 4% through price cuts. Analyzing $4 trillion in trade, the research showed these tariffs act as a consumption tax on Americans, boosting U.S. revenue but increasing domestic prices and reducing trade volumes rather than forcing foreign price concessions. The study highlights that while generating revenue, tariffs primarily shift costs to U.S. businesses and households, hurting the U.S. economy most.

Key Findings from the Kiel Institute Study

• Cost Burden: U.S. importers and consumers pay 96% of the tariff cost, while foreign exporters absorb only 4%
• Mechanism: Tariffs function as a domestic consumption tax, with higher prices passed on to American buyers
• Trade Impact: Instead of price cuts, targeted foreign exporters reduced trade volumes, choosing to maintain margins on fewer sales
• Counter to Policy Claims: The findings challenge the narrative that tariffs are a cost borne by trading partners, demonstrating they extract revenue from the U.S. economy.

Broader Economic Effects

• U.S. Economy Harmed: The Kiel Institute's KITE model projects significant harm to the U.S., with potential drops in output, higher consumer prices, and reduced exports
• Global Impact: Tariffs affect all countries, though to varying degrees, with the EU also experiencing negative impacts

In essence, the Kiel Institute study concludes that US tariffs largely function as a tax on Americans, increasing costs for consumers and businesses rather than extracting concessions from foreign entities.

Today's Aaron

Labor first, then capital.

Today's Belle

Republicans know they've got a real turkey on their hands, so they're thinking about changing the name to something they can use to scam the rubes with - again.

The Working Family Tax Cuts Law

Belle has several suggestions for alternate names, and I'm going to send them mine too.

• The Big Bamboozle Bill
• The Grandma Lives With You Now Bill
• The Boosting American Poverty and Crime Act
• The Yacht-Buyer Benefits Package
• The Busting Hospitals Act
• The Fuck The Farmers Initiative
• The Billionaires Win Again Bill
• The Dead Americans Non-Prevention Act

Tell 'Em No

These assholes just can't help it.



Conservatives are asking Trump for another big tax cut

Fresh off passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” some anti-tax advocates hope to push the administration to change how taxable capital gains are calculated.

Fresh off passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” several conservative organizations and Republican lawmakers are preparing to ask President Donald Trump for another major tax cut — this time, potentially without congressional approval.

Trump’s tax and immigration law is projected to add more than $4 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years, broadly reducing tax rates while cutting spending on Medicaid and clean energy subsidies. The legislation is the culmination of years of advocacy on the right, making permanent many of the 2017 tax cuts Trump approved during his first term, and it represents one of the most expensive new laws in decades.

With that victory newly secured, conservative groups — including Americans for Tax Reform, led by anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist — are already asking the Trump administration to get behind another cut, which would drastically reduce what investors pay on their capital gains.

The plan rests on changing how the Treasury Department calculates those taxes.

Currently, an investor who bought stock for $1,000 in 1980 and sold it for $10,000 today would owe capital gains taxes on the increase in value of $9,000. But under the proposal pitched by Norquist and others, the calculation would start by adjusting up the value of the original purchase to account for inflation — which would reduce the amount of gain that’s taxable after selling the stock.

Although a 1992 Justice Department opinion found that such a change would require an act of Congress, Norquist and other conservatives want the Treasury Department to execute such a policy unilaterally if necessary, providing a major windfall for people selling stocks, art, businesses, homes and other assets.

One GOP senator, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations, said he had spoken with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent about reviving the idea. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) has also been pitched on supporting such a plan in recent weeks, as advocates try to build congressional support, said two other people familiar with the matter, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

The Trump administration weighed unilaterally implementing the change during the president’s first term but backed off after Steven Mnuchin, then treasury secretary, suggested Congress should lead on the matter. Conservative groups are also asking congressional Republicans to include the measure in a second tax legislative package, possibly later this year or next year. (Johnson has said the GOP plans to pass a second party-line legislative package in the fall and a third in the spring of next year.) But if that does not emerge, they are also optimistic that Bessent may prove more sympathetic than Mnuchin to their case for Trump to act by executive order.

In an interview, Norquist said he directly recommended to Trump in a recent phone call that he should implement the change by executive order after passage of the tax bill, reminding the president that he had explored this option during his first term. Norquist, who argues that the new policy will help open up the housing market, said he has also talked to Bessent about the proposal.

Spokespeople for the Treasury Department and White House declined to comment.

“I said something like, ‘Mr. President, after we do the bill, we will need more economic growth. The Big Beautiful Bill is very pro-growth, but with this, we can have even more growth,’” Norquist said. “The bureaucracy stopped him the first time, but they can’t this time.”

It is unclear if the administration is currently considering such a plan. The GOP tax measure was only signed into law on Friday, and Trump’s economic team will be busy both implementing the tax overhaul and negotiating numerous trade deals ahead of a new Aug. 1 deadline before tariffs take effect.

Nonpartisan economists are sharply critical of the proposed change to the tax code. During Trump’s first term, the Tax Policy Center and Penn Wharton Budget Model found that indexing capital gains to inflation would add roughly $100 billion to $200 billion to the federal deficit over 10 years.

The affluent would disproportionately benefit from the change, those nonpartisan estimates have found. The highest-earning 1 percent of Americans would receive 86 percent of the benefits from indexing capital gains to inflation, while the bottom 80 percent of income earners would get just 1 percent of the benefits, Penn Wharton projected in 2018.

Meanwhile, the tax law Trump signed last week delivers more than $1 trillion in benefits to the top 1 percent while steeply cutting Medicaid and food stamps, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank.

“They just got a massive tax bill that is overwhelmingly tilted for the wealthy, and to hide the ball, they’re trying to unilaterally deliver additional tax cuts for the wealthy,” said Elizabeth Pancotti, managing director of policy and advocacy at the Groundwork Collaborative, another left-leaning think tank. “Why don’t they think the wealthy got enough in the tax bill they just passed?”

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, also a left-leaning think tank, has warned that indexing capital gains to inflation without adjusting other parts of the tax code would open up new tax-avoidance strategies. And the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank, has said that it is “unlikely that indexing capital gains for inflation would provide the economy a meaningful boost,” while stressing the complexity of implementing the proposal.

The proposal faces major legal obstacles, as well.

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in 1992 concluded that the Treasury Department did not have the authority for the unilateral cut. The change, if implemented unilaterally, would almost certainly face an immediate court challenge.

But conservatives have said they are optimistic they can persuade Trump. They are pitching the shift as providing relief from the inflation that occurred during the Biden administration, which Trump has frequently railed against. Trump also said in 2019 that it would be “very easy to do” and that a majority of his White House economic advisers supported it.

Stephen Moore, who has served as an economic adviser to Trump, said the proposal should be characterized as providing benefits to seniors, since it would lower their taxes on sales of stocks and potentially homes, though the first $500,000 in capital gains from home sales are already protected from taxes.

“Indexing capital gains is a layup — it’s something that would be hard for Democrats to argue against. It would be a big win for seniors, and it would unlock a lot of capital,” said Moore, who is also senior economic adviser for the America First Policy Institute and chair of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, two conservative groups. “This something we’re really pushing, and the White House has been interested.”

The Independent Women’s Voice, another conservative group, is expected to join the push. Heather R. Higgins, chair of the Independent Women’s Forum, said in a statement that “this is one of those good ideas that should be a no-brainer and nonpartisan. … Keeping these dollars matters to women, families, and small businesses.” Higgins added that the administration should make the change via executive order if passing legislation was not feasible. Americans for Tax Reform also pointed to IRS data showing 30 million returns had capital gains filings of some amount, and that 22 million of those were in households with $200,000 or less in gross income.

Some GOP lawmakers, including Sens. Thom Tillis (North Carolina) and Ted Cruz (Texas), have endorsed legislation to enact the change. House and Senate Democrats are expected to overwhelmingly oppose the measure.

This Will Not Be Fun

It seems unclear when we'll start to feel the crunch, but we're very much in line to expect increases in the cost of just about everything we buy. Duh.

And part of that problem is that some companies whose stuff isn't imported - or are selling stuff that's impacted just a little - will see the tariffs as an opportunity to jack up their prices right along with everybody else.

And I'll go out on the limb here and say there are politicians just itchin' to use the potentially backbreaking effects of the tariffs as leverage to kill taxes altogether (some have talked about this for a long time, and we're getting it from Trump now too). We may start to hear about attempts to re-animate some variation on the stupid idea that a flat tax is the fairest way to do things.

Also - there have been proposals floated that we should ditch income tax and go with a universal sales tax, or a value-added tax. This is all regressive as fuck and pushes what's left of the middle class down - and keeps everybody down - while benefiting only people who're making more than 3 or 4 hundred K.

I hate this shit. When we had a graduating, progressive tax schedule, it helped drive the societal machinery that made for a strong and stable middle class, which build up the best overall system ever.

Fake lord knows it wasn't perfect - far from it - but by the middle 60s it seemed like everybody was going to have a shot at the dream. And we'd begun to understand that when everybody has a shot, and everybody understands that everybody deserves it, then we're making the whole thing better for ourselves.

I sound like a sad old man waxing nostalgic, so back to the point:

This latest bullshit feels like more coercion. If they make us miserable enough, we'll bend to their will and sign on for whatever might ease the pressure.

So here's a look at what WaPo thinks is headed our way.

Here’s where prices could rise the most and least under Trump’s tariffs

Shoppers will see uneven price increases on goods.

The global tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump this week will cause prices to rise on a broad array of food, household items and electronics, economists warn.

But the increases won’t be applied equally — some items are likely to see much higher price hikes than others. Trump imposed 10 percent tariffs on imports from nearly every country and imposed higher rates on goods coming from about 60 specific countries.

Consumer goods will be more exposed to higher tariffs than food and drinks

That means products that the United States commonly gets from Vietnam, such as clothing and shoes, would be subject to a new 46 percent tax, whereas goods from Colombia, like flowers, would see a lower new 10 percent levy. Imports from Mexico, such as avocados, will have no new tax. In any case, shopping is about to get more expensive for Americans.

“There’s no way this is going to be absorbed by firms alone,” said Michael Pearce, deputy chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “This will be felt by consumers.”

The vast majority of consumer goods — almost 80 percent — brought into United States will be subject to tariffs of at least 20 percent, according to a Washington Post analysis of international trade data from the Census Bureau.

Canada and Mexico weren’t included in the latest round of tariffs, though a 25 percent tax was placed earlier this year on some of the goods they export to the United States.

“I think Mexico is breathing a sigh of relief,” said Michael Camuñez, president and CEO of Monarch Global Strategies, which advises businesses in international trade.

Mexico and Canada are the United States’ largest trading partners for food, and imports can avoid tariffs entirely if they are compliant with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) agreement. Still, experts expect food prices to rise somewhat with the new tariffs.

“The bottom line is, it does mean more inflation,” said Tom Bailey, a senior consumer foods analyst at Rabobank.

The prices of food products from other parts of the world, such as tea from Vietnam, could increase much more sharply with the high tax rates.

“Some retailers might just hang up a sign to consumers in shops and say, ‘price plus tariff,’” said Judy Ganes, president of J Ganes Consulting, which works with food and agricultural industries.

Bailey cautioned that prices will not rise exactly in line with the percentage of tariffs — a 46 percent tariff does not mean the final product will cost 46 percent more. Actual increases on finished goods are expected to be much less because some of the cost of the product comes from distribution and operations in the United States.

Countries in Asia are facing some of the highest rates, including goods from China, with tariffs of at least 54 percent, and goods from Vietnam, with a new 46 percent tax. That’s sure to mean higher prices for electronics such as phones, computers and video game consoles, which are often imported from the continent. The tariff imposed on goods from China could add roughly $250 or more to the cost of a $1,000 iPhone, though it’s not clear yet how much of the tariff costs would show up in consumer sticker prices.

The United States Fashion Industry Association said in a statement it was “disappointed” that the Trump administration imposed tariffs on the industry’s trading partners.

Most of the clothing sold in the U.S. is imported from abroad, and even clothing made domestically often relies on fabrics and yarn that are brought in from other countries, said Sheng Lu, a professor of fashion and apparel studies at the University of Delaware.

Apart from paying the new tariffs, clothing companies could also face a pullback from consumers, as people grow increasingly wary about their personal finances.

“If consumers do not feel safe about their financial outlook, they may stop buying clothing,” Lu said.

Ready For A Showdown?

Random-ish thoughts:

• We have to tax the rich now, so we don't have to eat them later
• Double the Social Security cap, and the system is good for generations. Remove it, and the surplus takes care of practically everything seniors will ever need
• Tell Elon to keep his grubby mitts off my stuff
• Republicans aren't trying to eliminate waste fraud and abuse - they're trying to install it. If you're impressed with the way the Russian military is working, you're gonna love privatized schools and Social Security

IF WE TAX THE RICH NOW

WE WON'T HAVE TO EAT THEM LATER

Reminder

Taxing rich people now

means we won't have

to eat them later

What's Coming

In anticipation of the probable push for another round of tax cuts for billionaires and corporations that keep posting record profits:

Today's Vic

About that tariff thingie.

IMHO, Republicans want tariffs for possibly two reasons.

1. To kill off the normal income tax schedules
2. To petty fog their schemes to smash dissent by stripping resources from potential opposition, and keep people so busy just trying to stay afloat that they don't dare make waves

When dealing with "conservatives" on any issue, the one thing you can always count on is that they're angling for control. Minority rule (aka: The Daddy State) doesn't work if people feel free to confront and challenge the privilege and sense of entitlement of snobbish effete plutocrats.

That's why they want to kill women's rights, and cut back voting rights, and squash labor rights, and eliminate Queerfolk rights, and and and.

Tax 'Em Or Eat 'Em

Last year, Walmart posted a profit of almost $150B.

They could've raised the salaries of every one of their US employees by $20K, and still netted over $112B.

$112,000,000,000.00

PROFIT

And BTW - Walmart employees are still among the largest groups that have to tap Medicaid and Food Stamps to make ends meet.

And Walmart (out of the goodness of their hearts I'm sure) maintains a permanent discount schedule for SNAP recipients.

You pay taxes to help the poor, and a shitload of that money goes into the pockets of the Walmart gang.

What was that shit you were talkin' about Welfare Queens?

I Will Stop You

I think Trump has been worried that he might not get the old money Republicans to go along with his hare-brained schemes, so he's emphasizing his intentions to serve the plutocracy by telling us straight out that he's all for shit-canning every progressive policy that's been put in place since FDR.

• Privatize Social Security
• Voucherize Medicare
• Kill Obamacare outright
• Eliminate EPA and OSHA (and the departments of Energy and Education, et al)

In a democracy, even very poor people have power thru the various agencies and regulatory bodies that their votes got politicians to create, and push those politicians to maintain.

In a plutocracy, people who don't have the money don't have the power.

Today's Debunkment

Actually, a blast from the past.

It starts out with a good explanation of the Marginal Tax Rate Increase, and the Wealth Tax.

AOC proposed an increase to 70% for anything over $10M in a year:

• So you pay the usual 37% on everything up to $10,000,000.00 (that's 37% assuming your clever tax accountant can't jigger up a way to exempt it)

Warren's proposal of a Wealth Tax:

• 0% tax on anything up to $50,000,000.00
• 2% on everything over that

Sorry not sorry, but I'm not going to believe you'd be plunged into destitution if we forced you to live on 63% of $10M, plus 30% of another $10M.

You can't live on $750,000 a month? You're gonna have to scrimp? Maybe give up HBO?

Give it a fuckin rest.

Robert Reich:

On Social Security & Medicare

To preface this, I think it's pretty safe to assume a few things.

1. I don't know what to do about all this - I'm not an economist, and I'm not a tax accountant, and I'm not trying to pretend I know how to fix it
2. Somebody does know how to fix it - in a fair, even-handed way
3. Anything we do to fix it will involve the tax code 

And everything we try to do will be picked apart and shat upon by all manner of armchair experts and keyboard commandos. This is likely going to get even messier than it's been for the last 90 years.

WASHINGTON — President Biden scored an early political point this month in his fight with congressional Republicans over taxes, spending and raising the federal debt limit: He forced Republican leaders to profess, repeatedly, that they will not seek cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

In the process, Mr. Biden has effectively steered a debate about fiscal responsibility away from two cherished safety-net programs for seniors, just as those plans are poised for a decade of rapid spending growth.

New forecasts from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, set to be released on Wednesday, are expected to show Medicare and Social Security spending growth rapidly outpacing the growth in federal tax revenues over the next 10 years. That is the product of a wave of baby boomers reaching retirement age and beginning to tap the programs, which provide guaranteed income and health insurance from the time benefits are claimed until death.

Those retirees are an electoral force. In refusing to touch so-called entitlement programs, Mr. Biden was appealing to seniors, along with generations of future retirees, when he used his State of the Union address and subsequent speeches this month to amplify attacks on Republican plans to reduce future spending on Social Security and Medicare or potentially sunset the programs entirely.

“They’re more than government programs,” Mr. Biden told a Florida audience last week. “They’re a promise — a promise we made: Work hard and contribute, and when the time has come for you to retire, you’ll be there — we’ll be there for you to help you out. It’s been a sacred trust, the rock-solid guarantee generations of Americans have counted on, and it works.”

In his 2020 campaign, Mr. Biden proposed shoring up Social Security’s finances and increasing benefits for some retirees by raising taxes on high earners. Social Security is primarily funded through payroll taxes on workers’ incomes of up to $160,200. Mr. Biden has suggested eliminating the cap for incomes above $400,000 a year, subjecting them to payroll taxes.

Influential Republicans have proposed a variety of changes to make both programs more fiscally sustainable, including spending cuts and gradually raising the retirement age from 67 to keep up with longer life expectancy.

Republican leaders in Congress have stressed in recent days that, despite the calls from some conservatives to link safety net spending and the debt limit, they will not seek those changes as part of an agreement to raise the nation’s borrowing cap.

House Republicans have threatened not to increase the current $31.4 trillion limit, which the United States technically hit on Jan. 19, unless Mr. Biden agrees to unspecified demands to reduce government spending and debt. If the cap is not raised and the government is unable to pay all its bills at once, some retirees might not get their Social Security checks as scheduled. But leaders say their demands to raise the cap will ultimately leave Social Security and Medicare intact.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, told reporters on Tuesday that “there is no agenda on the part of Senate Republicans to revisit Medicare or Social Security, period,” adding, “I’ve noticed that the speaker of the House has said the same thing.”

note: This does not mean McConnell is "on our side". It could just as easily mean, "We won't do anything to fix the problem, knowing the thing will eventually implode (because our tax-cut strategy is working according to plan), and then we can make our move to kill it altogether."

If both sides hold their positions, the fiscal debate will narrow to Mr. Biden’s proposals to raise taxes on corporations and high earners — which Republicans have roundly rejected — and Republican proposals to cut the growth of a much smaller slice of federal programs.

Mr. Biden plans to address the deficit in remarks on Wednesday in which he will criticize Republican proposals that he says would add $3 trillion to the debt. That includes repealing tax increases Mr. Biden signed into law in 2022, which would increase federal revenues, as well as making permanent several Republican tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of 2025.

That debate will exclude the primary spending-side drivers of future federal debt and deficits. Both Social Security’s and Medicare’s trust funds are currently spending more than they take in from payroll taxes and other revenue sources, a growing gap that is included in how the government accounts for the total size of its budget deficit.

In its last wave of forecasts, in May, the budget office predicted Social Security spending would grow by two-thirds over the coming decade. That’s more than double the expected growth rate for spending on the military and on domestic programs like education and environmental protection. High inflation could further accelerate that growth; Social Security enacted an 8.7 percent cost-of-living increase this year, its largest in decades.

By 2033, the May forecasts suggest, the federal government will be spending nearly as much on Social Security alone as it does on all discretionary spending — military and otherwise — combined.

Medicare is a smaller program but poised to grow even faster, at three times the rate of military and other discretionary spending over the next decade, according to the May forecasts. The new projections are likely to show its growth will be restrained somewhat by a law Mr. Biden signed last summer that is expected to reduce the program’s spending on prescription drugs for seniors.

Lawmakers could stabilize the programs by raising taxes, reducing spending or simply continuing to borrow money to keep paying full benefits. A group of liberal lawmakers led by Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, has a proposal to expand Social Security benefits and extend its solvency for 75 years through a variety of new taxes on investment and business income, along with earnings for Americans making $250,000 or more.

The conservative Republican Study Committee in the House has a plan that would raise the retirement age for both programs and reduce Social Security benefits for some higher-earning retirees.

Fiscal hawks in Washington, including think tank officials and some Senate Republicans, have said lawmakers must move now to find bipartisan agreement on plans to better balance the programs’ spending with tax revenues in the years to come. More than a decade ago, President Barack Obama, a Democrat, issued similar warnings.

“To put us on solid ground, we should also find a bipartisan solution to strengthen Social Security for future generations,” Mr. Obama said in his 2011 State of the Union address. “We must do it without putting at risk current retirees, the most vulnerable or people with disabilities; without slashing benefits for future generations; and without subjecting Americans’ guaranteed retirement income to the whims of the stock market.”

Some were dismayed that Mr. Biden — and Republican lawmakers — did not follow a similar path at his own State of the Union this month. “The sober warnings from the experts is quite a contrast to the gleeful cheers from bipartisan policymakers at the State of the Union for doing nothing,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which advocates federal debt reduction.

In his State of the Union address, Mr. Biden, who was Mr. Obama’s vice president, ripped Republicans for plans to cut safety net programs. Republicans in the audience booed him vigorously. After some back-and-forth with his critics, Mr. Biden declared victory.

“So folks, as we all apparently agree, Social Security, Medicare is off the books now, right? All right. We’ve got unanimity,” he said.

BTW, let's not pretend the problems haven't already started.

Asking For Help At 80 - America's New Face Of Hunger

PBS NewsHour

And also too:

The Forgotten History of the Radical ‘Elders of the Tribe’

The Gray Panthers staged rowdy protests against ageism and found common cause with young activists on everything from health care to racial justice. What can they teach us today?

By the mid-1970s, she was a national celebrity. She had speaking engagements all over the country; she traveled 100,000 miles annually, giving at least 200 talks a year. She was all over the TV: “The Phil Donahue Show,” the “Today” show and “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson, multiple times. Media monikers for her included “ball of fire,” “dynamo” and the now-problematic “feisty.” In 1978, the World Almanac named her one of the 25 most influential women in the United States. Shortly before she died in 1995, ABC News profiled her as its “Person of the Week.”

She was Maggie Kuhn, the woman who, 50 years ago, founded the Gray Panthers, a movement to encourage activism — sometimes radical activism — among the country’s older people. Today, both Kuhn and her movement have been all but forgotten. But their mission is worth remembering, commemorating and perhaps even resurrecting, especially in the present moment.

Then, as now, was a time of intense activism. Inspired by demonstrations on behalf of racial and gender equality, and against the Vietnam War, Kuhn insisted it was time that the issues facing older people be included in any social reform agenda. Her passion was to shatter every stereotype she could about older people and, as a lifelong feminist, especially older women.

- more -

One Dumb Idea

... after the next.

Republicans keep trying to move the Plutocracy Project along no matter what you or anybody else says.

Leigh McGowan

Because my entire income is Social Security, I don't pay income tax unless I work a regular job and earn an additional $15-20K per year. It would suck something awful if suddenly everything I buy goes up 30%.

I'd have no choice but to work just to try to stay even.

So let's take a look.

Currently, at $50,000 per year, about $14,500 goes to taxation - about $1200 per month.

• If your groceries run about $600.00 per month, you'll pay $780.00
• Instead of $250 per month for Gas & Lights, you'll pay $325.00
• Gasoline: Your 3-dollar gallon of gas goes down to $2.72 (no more DOT road tax), but then goes back up to $3.55 because of the new sales tax. At 1,000 miles per month, at 25 miles per gallon, at $3.55 per gallon, you're paying an extra $33 every month in taxes - and of course, we can absolutely count on the price of gas never going up, right?
• Buy a house at $300,000.00, and pay $390,000.00 - and then pay tax on top of the finance charges for the privilege of borrowing the money - plus you get to pay another $200,000 because you'll probably have to include that sales tax in your 30-year mortgage - which boosts those monthly payments by about $500
• Same with buying a car

And one of the kickers - if they wipe away the property taxes everybody pays on real estate, then the schools have practically no funding at all.

Add it all up, and you're paying more - at least $5,000 more per year. And that's just for the essentials of food, housing, and transportation.

So, staying with "just the essentials":

at $50,000, you'll pay about 39% of your income in taxes

at $100,000, you'll pay about 20% of your income in taxes

at $ 250,000, you'll pay about 8% of your income in taxes

This is nothing but a variation on "Flat Tax" - it's what dog-ass Republicans call "fair" - and I think we can count on the GOP to go back to the old bullshit of a flat tax, so they can pretend they're being reasonable.

But they're not. They're playing with the numbers, trying to set it up so they win either way.

With this "Value Added" shit, they win on percentages. With the "Flat Tax", they win on absolute dollars.

A progressive tax plan is what works. Everything the Republicans are proposing only works to put more yacht money in their pockets, while putting more debt, more hardship, and more misery on everybody else.

Eat The Rich

I'm totally uninterested in sob stories about how badly the obscenely wealthy are being treated.

Not when Jeff Bezos could end poverty and homelessness in this country all by himself, and still have more wealth than over 99% of us.

Elizabeth Warren, in WaPo: (pay wall)

Now that the Senate has passed a budget resolution, we’re one step closer to realizing President Biden’s transformational agenda: a once-in-a-generation investment in child care and Medicare, combating climate change and other efforts that would actually make our government work for families. The other half of the package — how to pay for these investments — is equally important.

The already huge gap between the 0.1 percent and everyone else is just getting wider. Billionaire wealth surged by $1.8 trillion from the early days of the pandemic through last month. The 400 richest Americans had more total wealth, as of 2019, than all 10 million Black American households, plus a quarter of Latino households, combined. Yet the ultrarich pay only 3.2 percent of that wealth in taxes, while 99 percent of families pay 7.2 percent. And scores of giant U.S. corporations pay zero.

I’ve proposed measures that would raise more than $5 trillion in revenue — far more than we need to enact the Biden plan. Though not every Democrat agrees with every one of my ideas, Biden campaigned aggressively on a suite of progressive tax policies, and voters embraced these changes at the ballot box. No matter how loudly Washington lobbyists bleat otherwise, progressive tax policies are wildly popular. Americans understand that our tax system has been rigged to reward the rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else. So let’s fix it.

First, it’s time to start taxing wealth, not just income. When Jeff Bezos takes a joyride to space, he isn’t paying for it with his declared income of $80,000. Bezos, who owns The Post, and lots of other billionaires have gamed the system so they have plenty of spending money and close to zero tax obligations. The best option to stop that is a two-cent wealth tax that applies only to the wealthiest 100,000 U.S. households — with a few cents more for the billionaires. Such a wealth tax would raise roughly $3 trillion in revenue over the next decade, without raising taxes on 99.95 percent of Americans. It’s supported by 68 percent of the country, including a majority of Republicans. And there are lots of ways to advance this principle — including a one-time wealth tax that would raise over $1 trillion.

Second, let’s turn to highly profitable giant corporations. In the three years following the 2017 Republican tax cuts, 39 megacorporations, including Amazon and FedEx, reported more than $122 billion in profits to their shareholders while using loopholes, deductions and exemptions to pay zero in federal income taxes.

These companies boosted their stock prices and increased CEO pay by telling their shareholders they raked in hundreds of millions of dollars in profits, while simultaneously telling the Internal Revenue Service that they don’t owe any taxes. The president supports taxing the profits that large companies report to their shareholders. Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) and I have a plan that mirrors this. We would require any company that earns more than $100 million in profits to pay a 7 percent tax on every dollar earned above that amount. Only about 1,300 public companies would pay the tax, raising nearly $700 billion over 10 years.

Finally, rules don’t mean anything if nobody enforces them, so let’s enforce the law. Currently, the top 1 percent of Americans fail to report more than a fifth of their income. The difference between taxes owed and taxes actually paid exceeds an estimated $1 trillion annually.

The superrich get away with not paying their taxes because decades of politically motivated budget cuts have hollowed out the IRS. Since 2010, the agency’s enforcement budget has declined by more than 20 percent, and it has lost one-third of its enforcers. It’s no surprise that audit rates for taxpayers making more than $10 million have plummeted. This should enrage every American who plays by the rules. That’s why over 70 percent of Americans support giving the IRS more resources to make sure the wealthy and corporations aren’t evading taxes.

Biden has proposed giving the IRS about $8 billion in additional annual funding. I’ve suggested a step further: $31.5 billion in permanent annual funding to track down wealthy and corporate tax cheats. The IRS also needs better reporting from banks and other financial institutions so it can sniff out the hidden cash of the ultrarich. These changes could raise as much as $1.75 trillion from tax cheats.

I’ve put these three proposals — a wealth tax, a tax on real corporate profits and closing the tax gap — on the table. There are other ideas worthy of consideration, but the standard should be writing rules that target wealthy freeloaders and corporate grifters and then enforcing those rules. American workers and families don’t want handouts. They want everybody to play by the same rules. The Democrats’ infrastructure plan is about investments and tax fairness — changes that would help build a strong future for not only a handful of people at the top but for everyone. This is what we were sent here to do. It’s time for us to do it.

Pay Up Or Get Out

One of the big fantasies we've been suckered with is the one about "the noble job creators" - the companies we have to bow down to for practically everything.

eg: WalMart employees get fucked over (right along with the rest of us) because the Waltons have figured out how to stay within legal parameters (which their lobbyists helped establish) while paying their people so little that an alarmingly big chunk of their hourly staff qualify for Medicaid.

So taxpayers get to pick up the tab for WalMart's healthcare insurance - as well as their water and sewer in a lot of cases, and of course their fire and police protection, as well as a fair amount of their federal taxes.

"State and local governments spend nearly twice as much

on corporate welfare as they do on fire protection"

WaPo: (pay wall)

President Biden and Democrats in Congress have kicked off a national debate about raising corporate taxes. Yet an arguably more important conversation is happening outside Washington, D.C.: how to slash the nearly $95 billion in tax incentives that states and cities give to businesses every year. And unlike the discussion about the corporate tax rate, the movement to cut corporate welfare has attracted notable support on both sides of the political aisle.

Legislators in 15 states have introduced bills that would block their governments from doling out tax incentives and subsidies through so-called economic development programs. Every state has used these programs, trying to convince corporations from Hollywood producers to sports teams to brand-name manufacturers to set up shop or stay within their borders.

State and local governments spend nearly twice as much on corporate welfare as they do on fire protection. It’s done through a combination of both direct payments and company-specific tax breaks: In Michigan, where I live, most incentives are cash payments. The same is true for the biggest giveaway programs in most states, such as Florida, where companies can get $3,000 “refunds” for each job they create. At least 35 states have handed out more than a billion dollars each, though many fail to report the true total.

Subsidies for Hollywood productions are among the most popular, with Michigan alone spending half a billion dollars between 2008 and 2015. National Football League teams worth billions of dollars each routinely get hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies to build stadiums. Each state tends to reward its biggest corporate citizens: In Michigan, Ford, GM and Stellantis get the most; in Massachusetts, General Electric; in Louisiana, oil companies; and in Washington state, Boeing received the biggest tax break in history, worth $8.7 billion.

And, of course, states pull out all the stops to lure big-name businesses. Wisconsin courted the chipmaker Foxconn with $2.9 billion in state tax credits in 2017, while New York and Virginia dangled a combined $3.75 billion in incentives to win Amazon’s second headquarters.

Such deals have deservedly spurred a massive public outcry. The Foxconn debacle played a major role in the 2018 gubernatorial race in Wisconsin, and the subsidy was subsequently cut by more than two-thirds. Widespread opposition even led Amazon to cancel its New York plans. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post.)

State lawmakers, representing various political bases, increasingly oppose these blatant handouts. No one has done more to draw attention to the issue than Dan Johnson, a progressive lobbyist in Illinois. In Michigan, the Senate Democratic leader and a key House Republican are leading the legislative charge. In Alabama and Utah, Republicans are in the vanguard. In Rhode Island, the Senate sponsor of the anti-subsidy bill is a Democrat, while the House sponsor is a Republican.

Despite their disagreements on other issues, these lawmakers share the view that states should compete on business climate and quality-of-life issues, not corporate welfare. They also have the facts on their side, as studies show that such subsidies can harm, not help, economic growth and almost always fail to drive the promised job creation.

Yet no state is willing to end its incentive program unless others do the same, fearing that unilateral disarmament would damage their economy. That’s unlikely: One study found that up to 98 percent of companies would make the same investment and expansion decisions without any tax breaks. Even so, state leaders aren’t willing to take the risk. Fortunately, the legislation under consideration in those 15 states is designed to overcome this hurdle.

Whether it’s Hawaii, Florida, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania or elsewhere, no bill currently under consideration would take effect on its own. If enacted, it would go live only after at least one other state passed the same measure. The goal is for many more states to enact the legislation simultaneously. It would then be illegal for all those states to reduce taxes or provide subsidies to entice specific companies to stay or relocate within their borders. Existing corporate welfare handouts would wind down until they disappear entirely. In short, the legislation creates an interstate compact to ban corporate welfare.

This concept is new, arising only in 2019. Yet the mounting interest from lawmakers across the country shows that momentum is building. Although no state has enacted anything yet, Utah is closest, with the interstate compact bill passing the House of Representatives in 2020. With each state legislative cycle, more lawmakers in more states introduce this policy. No wonder: Ending taxpayer giveaways to corporations has broad and bipartisan appeal.

This issue deserves at least as much attention as corporate tax rates. It’s a matter of respecting taxpayers and companies who pay their fair share. That’s a conversation America needs to have, and states are not only doing so, they’re moving toward the right decision.

It wasn't a buncha poor people who lobbied state and federal legislatures to put 100,000 pages of shelters, loopholes, and exemptions in the tax codes