Republicans are crowing about the tax cuts. Let’s discuss who really benefitted. 
Rant of the Day
“Working-class Americans have experienced a paycheck bump”? ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW? Here are the facts:
Let’s start with the middle class since that’s the one they brag about most. Even the White House’s own numbers show middle-class families got roughly $600-$800 for the ENTIRE YEAR, about $50-$65 a month.
That disappeared within a couple weeks. Gas is up 17% from Trump’s Iran war. Groceries keep climbing. Inflation (3.8%) is now outpacing wage growth (3.6%) for the first time since 2023.
And healthcare? ACA premium tax credits are getting eliminated, and this bill cuts $863 billion from Medicaid, meaning millions pay MORE for coverage or lose it entirely. This costs American lives.
That “tax cut” didn’t survive 1 day with a grocery run, a gas fill-up, and one doctor’s visit.
Now the people who actually got hurt. Households making $20,000 or less LOSE an average of $40 this year, not gain. SNAP dropped 5% in one month alone as this bill slashed $295 billion from food assistance. 65% of SNAP households already lost a deduction worth about $10/month.
Combine lost healthcare, cut food assistance, and rising costs, and the bottom 10% of Americans lose $1,214 a year in total resources.
Meanwhile 60% of all the tax benefits in this bill go to the top 25% of earners who needed the least.
There’s no paycheck bump. That’s a lie, and it shows exactly who this bill was built for. And it’s not you. You’ve added trillions to our national debt with nothing to show for. STOP LYING TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.
Distribution of the Tax Cuts
- Putting aside the extension of existing cuts, almost half of households will see an income tax cut of less than $100 in 2026 under the new tax law.
- About 20% of households will see a tax cut of more than $1,000. These households are concentrated in the upper-middle income range.
Please consider Distribution of the Tax Cuts in Current Law
Most of the tax cuts in the OBBBA were simply an extension of the tax code that was in place for 2025. If households think about tax changes on a year-over-year basis, rather than a counterfactual basis, then they may not “feel” the impact of the new tax law unless they benefit from one of the new tax breaks, like the “no tax on…” tax breaks or the higher cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions. Therefore, looking at tax cuts against a current policy baseline—that is, how much taxes changed above and beyond TCJA extension—helps us understand how much tax relief taxpayers will receive over and above the post-2017 status quo.
That analysis and some excellent charts is from last year.
But thanks to Trump’s press secretary for bringing up the lies again.
Finally, a tax cut for me, an upper middle class person. For the record my family works for a living, just like low income families do. So why can’t we get a tax cut just like they have gotten under Dems?
Note the SNAP class is essentially the free loader class of Welfare people. I don’t feel sorry that life got tougher for them since they aren’t contributing anything work wise. Maybe it will spur some of them to get actual jobs.
Hard work and productivity are incentivized. Laziness and welfare free-riding (at least by the lower classes) are disincentivized. That’s the best thing I can say about Trump’s whole package.
But a conservative government can do that without Trump.
He brings massive personal defects and consequences to that table. There are massive problems unaddressed or aggravated.
The view from afar is it seems no one really cares about the people, like many places politicians and elites only care about the welfare of their class. About the same in most western countries, however what ever the short comings America always seem to offer hope or the strength to deal with its short comings.
Not sure there is way out with Trump.
The tax cuts left the US with an unsustainable structural fiscal deficit of about 8 percent of GDP. Trump has now a very good chance to go down in history as the first US president that literally bankrupted the country. A fiscal crisis takes a long time to materialize, but Trump and the Republicans have created the ideal conditions for one to happen. The funny thing is that the Democrats seem to be rather blasé about the risk.
Taco takes care of himself, family and billionaire “acquaintances.” The rest can “eat cake.”
Let’s not forget that inflation is the worst tax of all, that it is highly regressive, and that it is entirely the fault of government, which is simply successful organized crime.
I beg to differ. If there’s one difference between the government and organized crime, it’s that one of them is organized.
Inflation might be based on redistribution of wealth: printing and handing out money. The current wave of inflation is based on frictions and shocks on supply, based on one man’s choices about tariffs, labor supply (immigration) and war. If this resulted in a manufacturing renaissance in the USA that hired otherwise low-income local people, it might be acceptable as a sort of tax for that project. But that seems not to have materialized.
The worst tax of all and the most immoral is income tax. It is submission to the government that your income does not belong to you and that it is the benevolence of the government that it lets you keep most of it (for now). It is a disincentive to work and save.
Second worst is property tax. You never really own what you live in/on. Don’t pay property taxes for a few years and find out.
Taxes & Death….. you can run but you can’t hide.