In true midnight fashion, reserved for those bills being crammed through without debate or normal process, the Senate has passed the Republican tax scam. Not only are dozens of senators smiling as they wake up much, much richer, the champagne is flowing in penthouses and boardrooms as the super rich get their super-special benefits from this hurriedly assembled patchwork of gifts to the wealthy.
While Paul Ryan is still warming up for the cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, SNAP, CHIP and more that still won’t pay for their $1.5 trillion Christmas gift to those whose stockings were already full, here’s a quick recap of some of the places where the corks are popping … and where they’re not.
Big investment banks are cheering.
The bill ... will give the country's seven largest banks — not including Goldman itself — an average 14% increase in earnings, Goldman found.
Tax accountants, and tax cheats, are thrilled to have a whole new generation of loopholes.
The people most likely to exploit any new loopholes are those who have access to savvy advice—namely, corporations and taxpayers with relatively high incomes, not poor Americans.
And hey, Bob Corker is personally walking away with $1.19 million from his kickback alone.
The real economists at the Center for Economic and Policy Research have done some math, and boy does Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker make out like a bandit with the #CorkerKickback.
That kickback is especially good for real estate developers, like Donald Trump, who also got to keep their existing suite of tax breaks that make their industry the go-to place for money laundering.
Because, really, that’s what Republican voters wanted—more rewards for Wall Street bankers, more money for real estate moguls, more money for wealthy tax cheats, and Bob. You have to think of Bob.
While 83 percent of the benefits go to the top 1 percent of tax payers, not everyone gets a box of new caviar-flavor Frosted Flakes. Who gets screwed by the bill? First off, simply everyone not in the top 1 percent. When Paul Ryan smugly says that the average taxpayer can file their taxes on a postcard—it’s because all the deductions they have now are gone. Except for their private jets. Thank goodness Congress saved those private jets!
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There are 13 million people set to lose their health insurance.
Which doesn't match the shrinkage in the corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 percent, but they'll probably still be able to live with it. Because they can afford health insurance, unlike the 13 million people likely to be forced out of the market when the individual mandate ends.
Republicans took time out to screw disaster victims.
Under the new tax plan, the deduction could only be claimed for those disasters that the president declares a federal emergency. …
most disasters aren’t large enough to attract attention from the White House.
And eventually, most taxpayers simply pay more taxes.
By 2027, the Tax Policy Center estimates that the overall change would be negligible. And 53% of taxpayers would face higher bills, many of them in the lower income brackets.
And that doesn’t take into account the losses they’ll be facing from other programs that are chopped as Republicans re-discover the awful, awful nature of the deficits they’ve generated and seek to close them—by doing everything but restoring tax rates.
Really, the bill can be summed up quickly.
- Corporations—already the wealthiest, largest corporations in history—win.
- The wealthy—already by far the richest people in Earth’s history—win.
- Everyone else, in an economy where most people haven’t gotten a raise since 1980, pays for it.