Trump Signs $1.5 Trillion Tax Cut Delivering 83 Percent Of Its Benefits To The Top 1 Percent, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That The Wealthiest Americans Were Not Yet Wealthy Enough

The Filing

WASHINGTON. President Donald J. Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act into law Friday, the administration confirmed, enacting a $1.5 trillion package that the Tax Policy Center projects will deliver 83 percent of its benefits to the top 1 percent of earners by 2027 and resolving the long-standing concern that the wealthiest Americans were still being asked to fund a meaningful share of the federal government.

The legislation, passed by Republican majorities in both chambers without a single Democratic vote, permanently lowered the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. The cuts for individual taxpayers were written to expire at the end of 2025, an arrangement officials described as a feature, on the grounds that a temporary tax cut for working families pairs naturally with a permanent one for corporations.

Trump hailed the law as "the largest tax cut in the history of our country," a characterization that several prior tax cuts, measured as a share of the economy, did not support. According to multiple accounts, the President offered a more concise assessment to fellow members and guests at his Mar-a-Lago club, telling them, "You all just got a lot richer."

The administration had projected that the corporate rate cut would raise average household income by at least $4,000 as companies passed their savings to workers. Companies instead directed a substantial portion of the windfall to shareholders, repurchasing roughly $1 trillion of their own stock in 2018, a figure that set a record and that officials characterized as wages successfully reaching the people who owned the wages.

The law also doubled the estate-tax exemption to roughly $11 million per individual and preserved a 20 percent deduction for income earned through pass-through entities, a category that includes the real-estate partnerships through which the President conducts much of his personal business. A senior administration official, asked whether the President stood to benefit from provisions he had signed, said the question reflected "a fundamental misunderstanding of who the economy is for."

At press time, the Congressional Budget Office had confirmed that the law would add roughly $1.9 trillion to the national debt over a decade, a sum that future taxpayers were reportedly being credited as the cut's eventual payers.

Who Benefits

§Donald Trump, whose personal income flows largely through real-estate pass-through entities eligible for the law's new 20 percent deduction, and whose heirs gained from a doubled estate-tax exemption.
§The Trump Organization, a collection of pass-through partnerships that received favorable treatment and retained the like-kind exchange break Congress narrowed for nearly every other type of asset.
§Corporations, whose tax rate fell from 35 percent to 21 percent on a permanent basis, in contrast to the individual cuts scheduled to expire in 2025.
§Wall Street shareholders, who absorbed roughly $1 trillion in stock buybacks in 2018 as the corporate windfall was returned to investors rather than to workers.
§The top 1 percent of earners, projected to receive 83 percent of the law's benefits once its individual provisions expire in 2027.
§Heirs to large estates, for whom the amount shielded from the estate tax roughly doubled.
§Republican campaign donors, who had conditioned further political contributions on the bill's passage.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment