Share
Trump Tax Cuts Flow to Execs & Shareholders, NOT Workers
The GOP tax scam passed in December 2017 was a blatant give away by Republicans to their corporate overlords and obscenely wealthy donors.
Most of the extra cash from tax savings is going into the pockets of stock shareholders through dividend increases and companies buying back their own stock in hopes of boosting its price.
A Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysis found that fewer than 45 of the 500 big companies that make up the broad Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index have paid out cash bonuses to their workers in the four months since the new tax law took effect.
Instead, the massive tax savings are being handed to corporate executives and shareholders. Robbery.
The amount of money benefiting shareholders has been sizable. In the first three months of 2018.... investors received $109.2 billion in dividends, up more than 8% from the $100.9 billion received in the same period a year earlier.... the S&P 500's quarterly dividend payments set a new record.
J.P. Morgan estimates that U.S. companies could buy back as much as $800 billion of their own stock this year, up from $527 billion last year. The sharp rise in share repurchases, according to the bank, is due to the benefits from tax cuts.
.... this use of cash benefits the wealthy and company shareholders, rather than middle-class workers.... 84% of all stocks owned by Americans are held by the wealthiest 10% of households....
“Trump and Republicans gave huge tax cuts to big drug companies, big oil and other corporations, but corporations are giving back little – if anything – to working families,” says Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness.
Here's another example just uncovered by Vox yesterday:
Harley-Davidson took its tax cut, closed a factory, and rewarded shareholders..... The motorcycle maker in January told Kansas City workers it would close a plant there. Days later, it announced a nearly $700 million stock buyback plan.
It’s a pattern that’s played out over and over since the tax cuts passed — companies profit, shareholders reap the benefits, and workers get left out. Corporate stock buybacks hit a record $178 billion in the first three months of 2018; average hourly earnings for American workers are up 67 cents over the past year. Harley-Davidson is an American symbol.... But as it’s getting its tax cut, it’s outsourcing jobs and paying shareholders.
Numerous polls have shown, and we hope voting in November affirms, that the majority of people are onto this Republican lie and utter hypocricy.
That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise; the average $4,000-per-household raise in after-tax income with which Republicans sold the tax bill never materialized. An analysis by the Tax Policy Center found that an average household earning between $49,000 and $86,000 will see a cut of around $930 per year
Republican Party abandoned any last remaining pretense of caring about deficits or federal spending.... $1.9 trillion in additional deficits, including higher payments on the national debt, that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects will result from the tax bill over the next 10 years.
Running deficits isn’t inherently a bad thing if the purpose is to stimulate the economy during a recession or address a national emergency. The problem with these deficits is that they come at a time when the economy is growing and mostly just enrich the wealthy and pump up corporate profits.
The degree of hypocrisy on display here is such that even the most obtuse pundit can no longer pretend that the right’s rhetoric about “fiscal conservatism” is anything but a cudgel to use against Democratic priorities.
Sources:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/04/13/how-companies-spend-tax-windfall/505122002/