Billionaire business owners deployed lobbyists to make sure Trump’s 2017 tax bill was tailored to their benefit. Confidential IRS records show the windfall that followed.
A report showing that the richest Americans, including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett, pay almost no taxes has refocused attention on the tax code.
Opinion Columnist
The budget proposal released by the Biden administration last week calls for almost $5 trillion in new spending over the next decade that is, outlays in excess of its “baseline” estimate of the spending that would take place without new policies. Some of the extra money would be borrowed, but most of it $3.6 trillion is supposed to come from new revenues.
President Biden has, however, repeatedly promised not to increase taxes on households making less than $400,000 a year. And his budget does indeed propose raising all the additional money via higher receipts from corporations and high-income individuals.
It’s worth noting, by the way, that the two proposals that have attracted the most attention raising the corporate tax rate, which Donald Trump cut from 35 to 21 percent, up to 28 percent, and raising the top individual rate back to 39.6 percent account for only a fraction of the proposed revenue increase (just over a quarter). Most of the money
The president offered new concessions this week, including dropping his plan to reverse some of the 2017 tax cuts, as he tries to win support from Senate Republicans.