Those in the top 0.1 percent of incomes would get an average tax cut of about $197,000, raising their after-tax incomes by 2.6 percent, according to the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution. Those totals include both the Medicare and investment taxes.
“It seems to be pretty much a giveaway to the well-off,” said David Albouy, an economics professor at the University of Illinois who studies geographic tax inequality.
Awaiting Cuts
Other Trump voters in Racine County say they don’t like that the wealthy may be first to secure a tax cut, but they’re giving the new president the benefit of the doubt that they’ll eventually see lower taxes, too.
“You would think they would be more for the lower-income people,” said David Fiskum, 62, a retired small business owner dining at a hamburger restaurant in the city of Racine. “I wish they had a better bill than what they’ve proposed.”
The western Michigan county of Manistee, which gave Trump 54.9 percent of the vote, also reflects the potential disparity. Of 11,440 returns filed in 2015, only 50 (0.4 percent) had incomes high enough to pay the 0.9 percent Medicare tax.
The county, which Obama won in 2012 with 52.2 percent of the vote, was one of those that helped Trump win Michigan as he became the first Republican to do so since 1988.
Ray Franz, the Manistee County Republican Party chairman and a former state representative, said he’s “disappointed in the Republican Party and Republican leadership” for the health-care bill that’s been put forward.
‘Significant Impact’
“I’m not a big fan of seeing this become financially unstable again, and I think that’s what this could end up as,” he said. “Eliminating those taxes will only contribute to that.”