Three startling questions, one after another, underscore the direction American tax law has taken over the past several decades. Appearing early 2021 book “Tax the Rich!: How Lies, Loopholes, and Lobbyists Make the Rich Richer.”
Shock after shock, here they come:
“If you worked every day from the time Columbus sailed to America until the present and earned $5,000 a day, you would still have less money than Jeff Bezos makes in a week.”
“If you had earned $100,000 every day since AD 1 and saved every penny, you would still have less money than Bill Gates.”
“If you had started when the human race was… Home wiseIf you walked upright for the first time, about 200,000 years ago, and saved $100,000 a year, you wouldn’t have the same amount of money as Mark Zuckerberg.
All three are not only true, they’re absolutely true: the “if” dollar totals are much lower than the actual dollar totals withdrawn by Zuckerberg, Gates and Bezos. Now comes David fireplace From New York University ThThrough real number crunching, taking into account the ongoing impacts of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill of 2025 and the tax and jobs cuts of his first term. represents. As Kamen sees it, the sirens are already sounding.
Listen to the key paragraph From his special report in Tax Notes last month:
“This report begins to quantify the scale of the challenge that lies ahead. It describes how the political patterns pursued over the past several decades can mean the triumph of a more reactionary and inequitable vision of our tax and financial system than what seemed achievable just a few years ago — and the attendant harm to millions of low- and middle-income Americans who will bear greater financial burdens as a result.”
Some of these burdens stem from “deep cuts to health care, food assistance, student aid, and clean energy subsidies” in the 2025 bill. Putting it all together, America is heading into the future with a double-whammy tax code — one that leans more toward the rich, and saves its stinginess and fast food for the poor. everyone last. As a percentage of their income, the poorest 20% will take the biggest hit from this year’s bill.
Estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) show how oblique The legislation is as follows: “Over the next decade, (the bill) would reduce taxes on the richest 10% of Americans by more than $14,700 per year per household, and reduce taxes on the richest 1% of Americans by more than $50,000 per year.” CBO and JCT Estimates The bill also shows the federal deficit increasing by $3.4 trillion over the next 10 years.
the last Of the One Big Beautiful Bill’s 100-plus provisions, it won’t take effect for another decade. It’s called “delayed implementation of new regulations protecting student loan borrowers,” words that define only a few of the millions who are sure to be harmed.
Republicans supported the bill almost unanimously. On the contrary, all Democrats in both the House and Senate voted against it. Here’s a look at one of the worst provisions of the bill, which ended up receiving 266 “yes” from Republicans and 257 “no” from Democrats.
As recently as 2017, the estate tax exemption for a married couple was just under $11 million. 2017 Trump His tax bill has more than doubled that amount, and his big sweet bill puts the exemption at an all-time high. It will rise to $30 million per couple in 2026 — nearly triple the estate tax break given by both Trump administrations, all of which benefits the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. These numbers mean that the largest untaxed wealth in American history will now be passed down from generation to generation (or in other words, the federal government will not receive a penny in tax revenue when it passes to its heirs).
As if cutting future taxes wasn’t enough, the bill is, too Includes A last-minute $16 billion corporate giveaway retroactive to January 16 of this year. It allows companies to deduct asset costs immediately rather than over their lifetime. News about its possible passage angry Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts: “The last thing American families need is a tax code that is further rigged to favor billionaires and billionaire corporations.”
In the end, America didn’t get a nice, big bill. As Warren feared, what America really got was a big, ugly bill.
Scorsese writes about taxes.