Soon you’re going to hear about taxes.

You’ll see images of families flashing across your TV screen while a soothing narrator assures you that the tax plan being debated in Washington really is good for you. The newspapers you read, the social media apps you scroll through, the websites you frequent, and the snippets of radio you catch will all feature ads talking about it.

That’s what a marketing blitz looks like, and there’s one coming for the Trump tax plan. It will be well-produced, well-orchestrated, and completely devoid of facts.

President Trump started his sales pitch for his tax cutting agenda in Missouri in August, where the assembled audience was treated to a fact-free sermon on the virtues of his plan. Gone were any specifics of what’s in it, or who gets what.

Looking at Trump’s tax plan from the campaign, as well as what the Republican majority in the House of Representatives have proposed, we can see the basic outlines of what’s coming.

Corporations will see their nominal tax rates drop from 35 percent to 20 or even 15 percent. Individual rates will go down — possibly for everyone, but definitely and most strikingly for the very wealthy. Overall tax revenue will tank, potentially by as much as $10 trillion over ten years.

What does all this look like in the real world?

On the corporate side, we know for sure that lower corporate taxes do not create jobs.

In the ads to come, maybe you’ll see a guy in a hard hat claim that corporate tax cuts will put him back to work. He’s lying.

A recent Institute for Policy Studies report looks at 92 profitable companies that already pay an effective 20 percent tax rate, thanks to loopholes. On average they’ve cut jobs, even as the rest of the private sector saw a 6 percent jobs increase.

On the individual side, half of the proposed cuts will go to millionaires, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Less than 5 percent go to families with household incomes below $45,000.

This is probably the biggest wealth grab in American history by the wealthy, for the wealthy. Selling it as a middle-class tax cut, regardless of the images in the ads you see, is just old-fashioned lying.

And finally there’s the revenue. Trump claims his tax cuts will pay for themselves with increased economic growth. That theory’s been debunked many times over and yet remains stubbornly in play.

So what happens when trillions of dollars of tax revenue get slashed?

Congress currently bans itself from passing bills that increase the deficit in one of their better acronyms — Pay As You Go (PAYGO). That means the tax cuts Trump proposes will have to come out of public programs.

No matter how much hype you hear, you’d better believe those cuts are gonna hurt. From food assistance like the Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) program to Head Start, and from clean water protections to unemployment insurance — it’s all on the line.

It’s hard to keep an eye on the truth when savvy marketing campaigns are hell-bent on deflecting your attention away from it. Don’t buy it. The Trump tax cut plan is disastrous for working families and for anyone who cares about a fair and just economy.

Josh Hoxie directs the Project on Taxation and Opportunity at the Institute for Policy Studies.


ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.

Donate
Donate
Leave A Reply

Subscribe

All the latest from Z, directly to your inbox.

Institute for Social and Cultural Communications, Inc. is a 501(c)3 non-profit.

Our EIN# is #22-2959506. Your donation is tax-deductible to the extent allowable by law.

We do not accept funding from advertising or corporate sponsors.  We rely on donors like you to do our work.

ZNetwork: Left News, Analysis, Vision & Strategy

THE WIND CRIES FREEDOM

The Wind Cries Freedom, the new book from Z co-founder Michael Albert, is a sweeping oral history of a future American revolution.

Through thirty interconnected chapters, it draws out the strategies, failures, turning points, and hard-won wisdom of a movement that called itself the Revolutionary Participatory Society. These are not the polished memoirs of politicians: they are the unfiltered accounts of people who organized in neighborhoods, hospitals, universities, stadiums, courthouses, and places of worship, and kept a shared vision alive through cynicism and exhaustion.

The result is speculative political fiction that reads like history: messy, human, and quietly hopeful in the way that only real experience and long thought can produce.

Get your copy and peruse more features on the book’s website below.

“Read it, argue with it, but don’t look away. The future it recalls is one we must still fight to deserve.”

Yanis Varoufakis

“The most unusual and intriguing combination of prophecy, manifesto, and movement building manual that I have ever encountered.”

Bill Fletcher Junior

“This work fills a huge gap in our social movement literature.”

Cynthia Peters

Subscribe

All the latest from Z, directly to your inbox.

This is your article this month.

We’re glad you keep coming back. If Z’s work has informed, challenged, or inspired you, that’s no accident: there are no paywalls, no ads, and no billionaire owners here, and there never will be. Independent media survives because readers choose to support it.

Billionaires fund their own media. We fund ours. Help us reach 1,000 sustaining donors:

Number of donors694
Our goal1,000

Sustainers at $9/month or more receive the digital Z Magazine.

Already a sustainer? Click here and we won’t ask again. Thank you!

Your reading count is stored only in your browser and is never sent to us.

Sound is muted by default.  Tap 🔊 for the full experience

CRITICAL ACTION

Critical Action is a longtime friend of Z and a music and storytelling project grounded in liberation, solidarity, and resistance to authoritarian power. Through music, narrative, and multimedia, the project engages the same political realities and movement traditions that guide and motivate Z’s work.

If this project resonates with you, you can learn more about it and find ways to support the work using the link below.

Independent media is not disappearing because the ideas are weak.

It is disappearing because platforms reward speed, outrage, and algorithmic visibility over thoughtful analysis.

More than 100,000 people read Z every month, free of paywalls, ads, and billionaire owners. It takes fewer than 1 in 100 of them to fund all of it: 1,000 donors who keep Z independent, for everyone, and build what comes next.

Number of donors694
Our goal1,000

Sustainers at $9/month or more receive the digital Z Magazine.

Subscribe

Join the Z Community – receive event invites, announcements, a Weekly Digest, and opportunities to engage.

OUT NOW: "The Wind Cries Freedom" by Michael Albert

Exit mobile version