Reprinted with permission from AlterNet.
When President Donald Trump and the Republican Party pitched their bill to overhaul the American tax code, they promised voters that their plan was aa “middle-class tax relief.” As the law goes into effect, though, most Americans are seeing little benefit, while the big banks are raking in record profits.
According to new analysis by the Associated Press, six big Wall Street banks made an additional $3.59 billion dollars so far this year thanks to the tax law.
Financial Analyst James Shanahan told the AP:“If there was one significant factor quarter for the big banks that I follow, it was taxes.”
This is no surprise. The tax law was designed mainly to slash taxes for business, dropping the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent.
The bill also cut individual tax rates, but those changes benefit the rich the most the poorest the least. Meanwhile, health insurance costs continue to rise, which can easily wipe out the meager wage increases middle- and low-income people may get from the tax law.
At a time of growing inequality and the rising power of corporations, the GOP decided to take the tax code and skew it even more toward those who already have a disproportionate share of wealth in the society. Record profits0 from the banks are only the most recent evidence of this change.
