Senator Susan Collins’ “Lopsided Giveaway to Corporations” Will “Likely Make Income Inequality Worse”

It’s no secret that the 2017 Republican tax law Senator Susan Collins helped pass amounted to a massive giveaway to corporate special interests and the wealthiest Americans, with little benefit to most Americans.

A new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service details just how “lopsided” Senator Collins’ tax law has turned out to be, with massive giveaways to special interests and little benefits to average Mainers. Independent economists agree that the GOP tax law will “likely make income inequality worse.”

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesperson Stewart Boss released the following statement in response to the new CRS report showing the extent of Susan Collins’ tax giveaway:

“It should come as a surprise to exactly no one that Senator Collins supported a massive giveaway to corporations and the wealthy, no matter the impact on Maine families. The more we learn about the law Republicans rammed through Congress, the clearer it becomes that Collins was all too happy to sell out working Mainers and tip the scales even further for big business and her wealthy donors.”

Vox: The GOP tax law’s lopsided giveaway to corporations, explained in one sentence

Congress’s official think tank finds the Republican tax cuts helped corporations, not workers.

By Dylan Scott

Key Points:

• A new Congressional Research Service report shows the 2017 Republican tax law had a very muted impact on overall economic growth. Rather, the main consequence was that real tax rates for corporations fell by nearly half while individual income taxes barely budged.

• But maybe that shouldn’t surprise us. If there was any remaining doubt that the Republican tax law was a lopsided giveaway to the corporate sector while offering negligible benefits for American workers, these findings should quell it.

• And while companies did use their windfall from the tax cut, as Vox’s Emily Stewart has been covering, “relatively little was directed to paying worker bonuses,” according to CRS.

• The tax law’s most enduring feature is a $1 trillion permanent corporate tax cut. It also slashed tax rates for people making more than $1 million and for pass-through companies disproportionately used by the wealthy, and it rolled back the estate tax on wealthy heirs and heiresses.

• …independent analyses have consistently found that the bill would cut taxes more for people with higher incomes than for people lower on the economic ladder.

• The Tax Policy Center found that 83 percent of the tax cuts in 2027 would go to the top 1 percent, as Vox’s Dylan Matthews covered.

• When I surveyed economists last year, they unanimously agreed that the GOP tax overhaul would likely make income inequality worse.

Read the full analysis here.

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