On Tax Day and Every Day: Fighting to Unrig the Tax Code and Invest in our Communities
By Susan Harley
One of the ways that Public Citizen is fighting each day on behalf of We the People is by advocating for a more equitable tax system where corporations, Wall Street, and the wealthy pay more of their fair share of taxes. We push for new revenue to be used to fund important government services that help everyday people make ends meet.
While we do this work daily, Tax Day is an important moment for Americans to take stock of the social contract—where we all chip in pay for shared goods like infrastructure, public education, first responders, and programs that help the most vulnerable among us.
The problem is that there are two systems: one for everyday Americans and one for the elite few who find all manner of ways to exploit the too generous loopholes that riddle our tax code. Instead of asking those who can pay more to contribute extra toward funding our shared societal costs—the Congressional majority in July 2025 chose to cement giveaways to the wealthiest among us. More than a trillion dollars of the cuts will go directly to the top 1% over the next decade. Worse, these tax cuts were paid for by ripping away crucial protections for those who need it the most like people who depend on Medicaid to receive health care or SNAP nutrition assistance in order to put food on their table.
Ever since it passed last year, we have been busy holding lawmakers accountable who voted in favor of the tax giveaway package, which we have dubbed the “Big Ugly Law” (or BUL), because it stole from the poor to give to the rich. We have been arming our activists with tools to share information on the harmful impacts of the Big Ugly Law with their community, collecting stories of people who are suffering because of the law’s cuts to benefits programs, releasing a report showing the hundreds of hospitals at risk of closure because of the cuts to Medicaid, publishing blogs showing how the BUL is worsening the affordability crisis and how it permanently weakened the estate tax, and more.
Tax Day and Beyond
In addition to our BUL accountability work, Public Citizen is advocating for more progressive tax policies and we participated in a coalition Tax Day this year to push for a fairer tax code among a number of fronts. For example more than 9,000 people have already signed a petition supporting our Unrig & Invest platform that we shared with lawmakers on Ways & Means Committee to demonstrate that their constituents support a bolder tax vision that increases taxes on corporations, Wall Street, and the wealthy.
Public Citizen attended a Tax Day policy forum with New York City’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani and economists Gabriel Zucman and Joseph Stiglitz where they highlighted how U.S. tax code exacerbates economic inequality and how historically the wealthy and corporations paid much higher tax rates during times of economic booms for the country.
We also supported legislation that was introduced on Tax Day like the Stop CHEATERS Act, which would restore funding to the IRS so that it can better ensure that the rich and corporations pay what they owe and the Millionaire Surtax Act, which would enact an additional tax on the top 1% of earners. And, we helped garner organizational and lawmaker support for the Direct File Act, which Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) forced a Senate vote for on Tax Day, to shine a light on the fact that the popular free tax filing program from the IRS was shuttered by the Trump administration.
And Public Citizen used our social media platforms on Tax Day to educate our followers about how ending the Direct File program meant that people no longer had the free IRS-run software available to file their taxes online and how corporations are able to utilize loopholes and pay zero taxes.
Moving forward, we will continue to hold lawmakers accountable for the Big Ugly Law, including making sure that the Republicans who supported it don’t succeed in their attempt to rebrand the legislation by overemphasizing the small, temporary deductions that were included to obscure the massive giveaways to billionaires. We will also continue building the necessary support in Congress to move forward progressive policies to increase taxes on the super-rich, huge companies, and Wall Street tycoons. But, we need your help! Please share our petition and story collection portal with your networks. And, if you have a bit more time, we’d love to chat with you about other opportunities to get more engaged like writing a letter-to-the-editor of your local paper or hosting an in-person or virtual conversation with your friends and neighbors.
Together, we will win a fairer tax system where the rich and corporations are no longer able to skirt their duty to support our shared society, By doing that, our nation will have more than ample revenue to fund programs to make costs like health care, childcare, housing, and higher education more affordable so that everyday Americans can live a healthier and happier lives.