Leaked Congressional Analysis Shows GOP Bill Raises Taxes on Millions of Americans

Thirty-eight percent of the country won’t get a noticeable tax break when the cuts kick in.

MichaelDeLeon/Getty

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

On Wednesday, a leaked analysis from Congress’ nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation showed that 38 percent of Americans would not get a significant tax cut in 2019 under the Senate tax bill. After the tax bill’s individual cuts expire in 2025, 84 percent of Americans would see their tax bills go up or change by less than $100.

The JCT analysis was obtained by the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal but has not been officially released. The estimate reinforces multiple studies showing that the wealthiest Americans would be the biggest winners under the House and Senate tax bills, despite Republicans’ repeated claims to the contrary. The Senate is currently debating the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and could pass the bill as soon as this week.

In selling their tax bill, Republicans have focused on the bill’s effects before the individual tax cuts expire at the end of 2025. Their justification is that Congress won’t actually let the individual cuts go away—essentially conceding that the $1.4 trillion tax bill relies on accounting gimmicks to mask its true cost. But there are no guarantees that future members of Congress will go along with the plan, especially when confronted with deficits exacerbated by the tax cut.

Either way, the new JCT numbers, which are generally considered authoritative by both Republicans and Democrats, show that the Senate tax bill creates millions of losers even before the individual cuts expire. In 2025, when the bill is in full effect, 57 percent of middle-class taxpayers would get a tax cut worth more than $500, while 12 percent would see their taxes stay roughly the same and 15 percent would pay higher taxes than they would under current law. 

The numbers are much starker after almost all the individual cuts end. There is, however, one exception that doesn’t expire. The bill would permanently switch to a new inflation measure that would gradually raise taxes by bumping Americans into higher tax brackets. That provision alone would raise taxes by $134 billion over the next 10 years, and at least $400 billion in the following decade.

In 2027, 26 percent of taxpayers that make between $50,000 and $75,000 would face higher tax bills, while another 59 percent would see their tax bills stay about the same. Only 5 percent of those families would get more than $500, but 56 percent of taxpayers who make more than $1 million per year would get at least a $500 tax cut.

The new analysis further debunks President Donald Trump’s promises that wealthy people would not benefit from his tax plan. At a rally in Missouri on Wednesday, Trump said the tax cut is “going to cost me a fortune, this thing—believe me.” As Mother Jones has written, Trump and his heirs are likely to pocket hundreds of millions of dollars, though it’s impossible to know without seeing the president’s tax returns.

At the rally, Trump said he was willing to pay more taxes out of a sense duty. “Me? I don’t care,” Trump said. “This is a higher calling.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate