Elections have consequences, especially during tax season. People all over the country are outraged over having little to no refund or having to owe the Internal Revenue Service. Blame it on Trump and the greedy Republicans. Many Americans are especially feeling it on tax day.
Republicans are claiming the reason why many Americans are not seeing a tax refund this year is because there was less taken out of their check. However, many people are calling BS. Vox.com reports, “The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was largely focused on reducing taxes for rich business owners. People who are stand to inherit multi-million dollar estates got an enormous tax cut, as did people who own ‘small’ businesses that generate millions of dollars in annual profits. And, of course, there was a big cut in the corporate income tax rate, with benefits largely flowing through to stock owners in a country where 80 percent of the value of the stock market is owned by the richest 10 percent of the population.” As we all knew, Trump’s tax bill was a bonanza for the rich.”
As NewsOne reported in November 2017, before the tax bill passed, economists predicted that the president’s plan for tax reform will only benefit the wealthiest Americans. With the average Black household earning $43,000, it would appear African-Americans were not taken into consideration at all when preparing the proposed tax plan that would reduce the existing seen tax brackets to just four.
Further compounding the impending tax plan is that the racial wealth gap – already at a historically wide margin for Black folks compared to Whites – could expand even more, according to the News & Observer.
The racial discrepancies in tax breaks can’t be ignored, either, and that’s largely due in part to the low number of Black homeowners, the Washington Post reported.
Black folks are already behind the economic 8 ball, but if Trump’s tax plan does pass – the Senate has yet to introduce its own – it could be devastating to a demographic that already needs nearly 230 years to build the wealth of a white family.
“Absent significant policy interventions, or a seismic change in the American economy, people of color will never close the gap,” the Nation wrote.
Clearly, this is only the beginning. See the reactions below to people filing their taxes this year.
