Trump said: "We enacted the biggest tax cuts and reforms in American history. Our massive tax cuts provide tremendous relief for the middle class and small businesses.
To lower tax rates for hardworking Americans, we nearly doubled the standard deduction for everyone. Now, the first $24,000 earned by a married couple is completely tax-free. We also doubled the child tax credit.
A typical family of four making $75,000 will see their tax bill reduced by $2,000 -- slashing their tax bill in half.
This April will be the last time you ever file under the old broken system -- and millions of Americans will have more take-home pay starting next month … We repealed the core of disastrous Obamacare -- the individual mandate is now gone."
Political Correspondent: The tax cut signed into law last month is not the largest in American history, but the eighth largest, at about 0.9% of the gross domestic product. In 1981, Ronald Reagan signed the largest cut, at 2.89% of GDP.
The $1.1tn tax cut will theoretically mean lower taxes for every income bracket in 2019, but it is misleading to suggest that those cuts will last for everyone.
Over time the cuts
disproportionately save money for the wealthiestAmericans. Some of the tax cuts phase out in 2025, meaning that by 2027 Americans earning less than $75,000 will see tax increases, while those earning more than $75,000 will see continued savings. More than 75% of the savings will go to people who earn more than $200,000, according to
Moody’s, or about 5% of taxpayers.
Meanwhile Americans in the top 1% of earners will save hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, through the cuts,
according to the Tax Policy Center. The president’s family could save as much as $11m, according to
an analysis by the New York Times. The tax plan also eliminated the estate tax, which only affected
a few thousand extremely families with extraordinary wealth, and it is expected to
add $1tn to the national debt.
Trump is correct that the tax overhaul also
repealed the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act.
Trump said: "We slashed the business tax rate from 35% all the way down to 21%, so American companies can compete and win against anyone in the world. These changes alone are estimated to increase average family income by more than $4,000."
Political Correspondent: Before last December’s tax cuts, the US had one of the highest corporate tax rates, a federal rate of 35% that could reach 39.1% with state taxes; the effective rate was 27.1%. The cuts reduced them to 21%;
few corporations actually pay at the rate, instead using loopholes and deductions to pay far less. It is false that the US ranked highest among developed countries for
personal income rates or for tax revenue as GDP, according to the OECD. As a percent of GDP, the US ranks in the bottom third of those nations.