House Republicans’ outline for tax reform would result in massive tax cuts for high-income earners while costing the Treasury $4 trillion over 10 years, a new analysis from an outside group finds.
The report from Citizens for Tax Justice, a left-leaning nonprofit group, is the first outside look at the House GOP tax reform unveiled last week, and one from an source typically at odds with the tax rate-cutting agenda of Republicans.
Recommended Stories
The analysis finds that the top 1 percent of income earners would see an average tax cut of $137,780 in the first year that the Republican tax cut was imposed, while the top 0.1 percent would earn a tax cut of nearly $800,000.
The plan would yield tax cuts for high earners in large part because it would eliminate the estate tax, lower top tax rate, and cut capital gains taxes, while also lowering corporate taxes by nearly half.
Citizens for Tax Justice also finds that the plan would increase the federal debt by $4 trillion over 10 years.
House Republicans, however, have said that the plan is designed not to add to the deficit, once the effects of the faster economic growth that would be spurred by the plan is taken into account. A top Republican leadership aide said that the reform parameters — including tax rates and thresholds — would be adjusted to achieve that result, at least on paper.
Nevertheless, the analysis is one likely to be seized on by Democrats, who are eager to lump House Republicans in with presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, whose tax cut plan is estimated by several outside groups to cost the Treasury around $10 trillion over a decade.
