Tag Archives: 2017 tax cuts

The Lies We Have Been Told About Taxes

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As Congress debates “one big, beautiful bill,” they need to consider the benefits of the 2017 tax cuts and the impact of not extending them. On Sunday, The American Thinker posted an article about the lies the media is publishing about the 2017 tax cuts.

The article reports:

Lie #1: Saying numerous independent analyses have shown anything. There is not one independent analysis that could have shown what they say in the paragraph.

Lie #2: Saying it was skewed for the rich. Every taxpayer benefited, and the poor and middle class got bigger percentage reductions than the rich. The rich got penalized greatly with the limits on state and local tax deductions. The rich pay a bigger share of taxes than they ever have.

Lie# 3: The tax cuts drove up deficits and debt. That is the most obvious lie. Federal revenues have risen substantially for the eight years following the rate cuts, and higher revenues do not raise debts and deficits. Only increasing spending much faster than revenue increases causes debts to rise.

Lie #5: The tax rate cuts failed to deliver on their promises. This is another obvious lie.

The promise was that the cuts would help the economy and help people have higher real wages. And the cuts’ results were that poverty hit record lows and real wages were rising for everyone, especially those at the bottom and people of all races:

Real median household income increased by $4,400 in 2019, reaching an all-time record high of $68,700. This represents a 6.8 percent one-year increase, which is the largest one-year increase in median income on record. Since 2016, real median household income has increased by 9.7 percent (after adjusting for a Census survey redesign in 2017).

Income gains in 2019 were largest for minority groups. Real median income grew by 7.9 percent for black Americans, 7.1 percent for Hispanic Americans, and 10.6 percent for Asian Americans (see Figure 1). These one-year increases were all record highs, and the new income levels reached in 2019 were all record highs, as well.

Lie #6: The tax bill is unpopular with the public. According to a poll, 85% want the tax rate cuts extended. That is pretty popular.

The article concludes:

Another lie that we constantly hear is that extending the tax rates will cost $4.5 trillion. Keeping the rates the same costs nothing, and revenues will continue to rise. Only in the DC fictional world will raising rates back to 2017 rates raise $4.5 trillion when the lower rates have provably raised more money.

The higher rates would slow down the economy and further destroy Americans’ purchasing power, especially among the poor and middle class, people whom the media and other Democrats only pretend to care about. All they really care about is more power and money for the government.

Conclusion: Don’t ever believe any organization that pretends to be a non-partisan think tank. These organizations have an agenda, and they don’t care how many lies they have to tell to intentionally mislead the public.

Don’t you wish people’s pants did catch fire when they lied?

How To Restore The American Economy

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On Friday, The Daily Signal posted an article listing three basic ways to restore the American economy.

The article reports:

1) Make the 2017 tax cuts permanent: The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has been one of the most successful pieces of legislation in recent years. Despite that, many of its critical provisions are set to expire in 2025 if Congress does not act soon.

For most Americans, the most important aspect of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that is set to retire is the individual income-tax cuts. That provision cut taxes for 80% of Americans, saving individuals an estimated $1,400 annually, with lower- and middle-income Americans benefiting the most.

If Congress lets this provision of the act expire, middle-class families are likely to pay over $1,000 more in taxes annually.

…2) Eliminate special tariffs: Politicians continually peddle the falsehood that tariffs help working-class Americans, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Tariffs are an inherently regressive form of tax that places an undue burden on lower- and middle-income families.

Since 2018, Americans have paid more than $280 million in extra taxes to buy washing machines and washing machine parts from abroad. That has directly contributed to the steep rise in prices of laundry equipment, which was up 7.9% year-over-year in January.

Unfortunately, that was not the only sector negatively affected by tariffs. Americans have paid more than $12 billion in tariffs on imports of aluminum and steel since 2018.

Steel and aluminum are crucial inputs for countless manufactured goods, but the automotive industry has been one of the hardest hit. The price of new vehicles rose more than 12% year-over-year in January.

…3) End the war on conventional fuels: The damaging effects of bad policy might not be more obvious in any other area of the economy than in the energy sector.

Energy prices rose nearly 27% year-over-year in January, based on the Consumer Price Index, with gasoline and natural gas rising 40% and 23.9%, respectively.

Washington’s war on conventional fuels is clearly contributing to the rapid increase in prices of basic sources of energy that Americans use every day to heat their homes and get to work.

Not only has Washington made it harder to transport fuel (for example, by canceling or slow-walking new pipeline construction), but it has also made it more difficult and expensive to produce natural gas, coal, and oil here in the United States, creating an avoidable reliance on foreign imports.

The administration has proposed or issued new regulations burdening nearly every aspect of conventional energy markets, from financing to consumer use.

Other holdover policies—some decades or even a century old—are increasing costs and inefficiency in energy markets. For example, unnecessary regulations and mandates have increased the costs of gasoline and have put economic pressure on refineries, some of which have had to close or downsize.

Please follow the link to the article for further information.