Both Sides Spin Who Would Benefit from Extending Trump Tax Cuts

With the Republican-controlled Congress moving forward with President Donald Trump’s call to extend the 2017 individual tax cuts, Democrats and Republicans are spinning the facts about who would benefit. Several Democrats have framed the tax cuts as exclusively benefiting billionaires, while Trump has suggested everyone in America would see a tax cut.

On average, taxpayers in every income group would get some tax relief. But not everyone. In all, about two-thirds to three-quarters of taxpayers would get a tax cut, according to independent analyses. Also, the cuts skew in favor of wealthy Americans, who would see more tax relief not only in the dollar amount but as a percentage of income, on average. But again, the wealthy wouldn’t be the only ones to benefit.

(For clarity, people would experience an extension not as a tax cut but as the absence of a tax increase if the provisions were allowed to expire.)