Tens of thousands of jobs were killed in the process
Jake Johnson for Common Dreams
The new analysis, which cites figures from the Institute on
Taxation and Economic Policy, was published amid an ongoing congressional debate over
whether to extend elements of the 2017 law that are set to expire at the end of
next year. It also comes as Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, is
campaigning on a fresh round of tax cuts for the wealthy and large corporations.
Republican lawmakers, bolstered by an army of corporate lobbyists,
have signaled that they are prepared to quickly ram through new
tax breaks if Trump wins the presidency and the GOP secures control of the
House and Senate in next month's election.
Vice President Kamala
Harris, the Democratic nominee, has proposed raising the corporate
tax rate from 21% to 28%.
"The biggest corporate winners of the Trump tax giveaway used their massive windfall mostly to pad profits and enrich a small group of wealthy investors instead of raising their workers' wages and lowering prices for consumers," Accountable.US president Caroline Ciccone said in a statement. "There's nothing to be gained for everyday Americans by doubling down on the Trump corporate tax breaks—a historic mistake that added trillions to the deficit while threatening critical priorities like Social Security and Medicare."
"It's time billionaires, wealthy tax cheats, and price-gouging corporations stop avoiding their fair share of taxes at the expense of everyone else," Ciccone added.
The 15 corporations examined in the new report are Verizon,
Walmart, AT&T, Meta, Home Depot, Intel, Comcast, Walt Disney, Visa, Capital
One Financial, Lockheed Martin, Amazon, Lowe's, United Parcel Service (UPS),
and Texas Instruments.
Collectively, according to the Accountable.US report, those
companies saw their profits surge by over $257 billion and have spent over $464
billion on stock buybacks and $374 billion on dividends since the passage of
the Trump-GOP tax cuts. Large shareholder payouts in the form of share
repurchases—which are on track for a new U.S. record in
2024—have been linked to mass layoffs.
In the years preceding enactment of the 2017 law, which cut
the statutory corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, the 15 corporations studied
in the new analysis paid an average effective tax rate of 27%. In the four
years following the law's passage, the companies paid an average effective rate
of 13%.
Meanwhile, the substantial benefits that the law's boosters
promised the U.S. working class have not materialized.
As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted over the
summer, "Trump administration officials claimed their centerpiece
corporate tax rate cut would 'very conservatively' lead to a $4,000 boost in
household income," but "research shows that workers who earned less
than about $114,000 on average in 2016 saw 'no change in earnings' from the
corporate tax rate cut, while top executive salaries increased sharply."
Bharat Ramamurti, former deputy director of the National
Economic Council, said Wednesday that "instead of trickling down to higher
wages for workers and producing a surge in business investment as they claimed
at the time, the Trump administration's giant corporate tax cut mainly resulted
in higher executive pay and massive shareholder payouts."
"It was a failed approach," said Ramamurti,
"and Congress should use the expiration of key provisions of the Trump tax
bill next year to bring in more revenue from corporations and the
wealthy."
