Trump's Tax Plan Is a Sweet Deal for the 1 Percent

U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled his tax platform on Wednesday, and one thing is clear: the rich will get richer.

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In a White House briefing, National Economic Director Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced Trump's plan, which will drastically cut the U.S. corporate tax rate to one of the lowest among the world's developed economies from 35 percent to 15 percent.

"Welcome to Goldman Sachs populism!" said Public Citizen president Robert Weissman. "The Goldman Sachs tax plan will slash taxes on giant corporations and the corporate elite. With the elimination of the alternative minimum and estate taxes, it not so incidentally appears to confer huge benefits on President Trump himself — though of course, we can’t know for sure so as long as Trump’s tax returns remain secret."

The proposal aims to reduce the individual income rates and reduce brackets from seven to three, pegged at 10, 25 and 35 percent. The so-called “death tax” for inheritance will also be scrapped under the proposal.

“We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do something really big … this is about growing the economy, creating jobs,” Cohn said, adding that the current corporate tax rate made the U.S. “one of the least competitive countries in the corporate world.”

The alternative minimum tax, which was designed to stop the super-rich from using tax deductions and paying next to no tax — which Trump heavily benefited from — will also be scrapped under the proposal. According to the Tax Policy Center, the top 1 percent of taxpayers are forecast to reap 51 percent of the benefits from that plan.

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Tax cuts will also help Trump’s large business portfolio and his Cabinet, which has been stacked with the ultra-rich. Trump continues to refuse to give in to ongoing pressure for him to release his tax returns, and Mnuchin reiterated that Trump still “has no intention” to do so.

Both Mnuchin and Cohn were previous heads in the finance company.

“Trickle-down economics hasn’t worked before, and it won’t work now,” Public Citizen's Weissman said, adding that U.S corporations already make record profits and are “dodging taxes at outrageous levels.”

Mnuchin claimed that the new tax overhaul will somehow “pay for itself” by stimulating the economy, but added that the finer details of the plan were yet to be finalized. Former Labor Secretary and economist Robert Reich tweeted that a cut to the corporate tax rate was “truly dumb” and the claim that the plan would pay for itself “is supply-side nonsense.” He added that the plan was the " biggest declaration of class warfare" in U.S. history.

The plan, which still needs the approval of Congress, is set to strip more than US$2 trillion from federal government revenue over 10 years, and many — including economic conservatives from both of the major parties — are concerned that it will blow out the already mammoth federal deficit.

“President Trump’s tax plan is short on details and long on giveaways to big corporations and billionaires,” Democrat and leader of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi said in a statement.

“Instead of focusing on hard-working families as he promised, President Trump's tax outline is a wish list for billionaires,” she continued.