Despite a near blackout in the media of good news regarding the 2017 tax reform, the law lowered taxes for the majority of taxpayers, and will do so for years. The New York Post editorial board examined why so many Americans believe the tax cut didn’t work for them, writing:
Why are so many people under the wrong impression about their own taxes? As the Times put it, the gap “appears to flow from a sustained — and misleading — effort by liberal opponents of the law to brand [Trump’s tax reform] as a broad middle-class tax increase.” Give the paper credit for honesty.
Fact is, “Democrats did a very good job” at convincing people they wouldn’t benefit, the Tax Policy Center’s Howard Gleckman observed. “The reality has been unable to break that perception.”
Here in New York, as E.J. McMahon noted on these pages recently, Gov. Andrew Cuomo never stopped railing about the Trump tax cuts. He called them “an all-out direct attack on New York’s future,” suggesting they would effectively raise levies on middle-class families by as much as 25 percent.
Turns out “the vast majority” of New Yorkers actually “paid lower taxes in 2018 then they would have under the previous federal law,” wrote McMahon. Even Cuomo himself paid less: just $39,138 on his $211,289 income (18.5 percent), versus $41,765 on his slightly higher $212,776 income (19.6 percent) in 2017.
Add in the fact that the economy is strong — the job market’s hotter than it has been in years — and it’s hard to understate the benefits of the reforms passed by Republicans and signed by Trump.
Read more here.
