Opinion: It's official: The Trump tax cuts were a bust
Right before Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in December 2017, President Trump proclaimed:
“It’ll be fantastic for the middle-income people and for jobs, most of all ... I think we could go to 4%, 5% or even 6% [GDP growth], ultimately. We are back. We are really going to start to rock.”
A year later, it’s very clear that the tax cuts boosted gross domestic product and jobs a bit — and just for one year. Its effects are fading as U.S. GDP growth appears likely to weaken in 2019. The only thing that “rocked” were corporate profits and the stock market.
And we’re facing trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act made small cuts in rates to most individual taxpayers, while cutting the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, expanding deductions for “pass-through” companies, and taxing only corporate income earned in the U.S., not worldwide. That theoretically removed a major barrier to U.S.-based multinational corporations repatriating the estimated $2.6 trillion in accumulated earnings they’re holding overseas.
Muted hiring, investment plans
The failure of the tax cut bill to achieve those intended results was made clear Monday when the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) released its January Business Conditions Survey. This is a poll of more than 100 economists employed by major firms in corporate America, so they’re hardly lefties. But they are guided by facts and hard data, not supply-side delusions.
Some 84% of these economists reported that in the year since their passage, the tax cuts “have not caused their firms to change hiring or investment plans.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/taxes/opinion-its-official-the-trump-tax-cuts-were-a-bust/ar-BBSWBa5?li=BBnbfcN
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