Shredded Tax Return Promises
The final GOP tax bill marks the breaking of many promises. For example, it neither closes the carried interest loophole which President Donald Trump pledged to end nor does it meet Speaker Paul Ryan’s promise to reduce the seven tax brackets down to three.
Each man also broke other important related promises related about tax returns themselves.
Trump began stating all the way back in 2015 that he wanted “to put H&R Block out of business” by making taxes much easier to file. As recently as November, Ryan was still pushing the idea that their bill would results in a postcard-style filing system. The lead on the House’s tax proposal, Rep. Kevin Brady, claimed that 9 out of 10 Americans would be filing on postcards. However, H&R Block’s stock has risen 16 percent so far this year since that promise has turned out to be “more gimmick than revolution.” (In fact some believe that the number of tax loopholes may have actually increased.)
Trump’s most misleading promise about the tax bill, however, is one which the public may never be able to fully verify thanks to his tax return lie.
An astonishing 2,438 days ago, Trump said if he ran for president he’d make releasing his taxes contingent on then-President Barack Obama releasing his birth certificate. In 2014 and 2015, he made even more direct promises that he would release them.
Needless to say, that never happened and therefore it is impossible to definitively say how much Trump will benefit from the bill he will soon be signing. What is almost certain however is that Trump was way off-base when he said that the tax bill “is going to cost me a fortune.”
His similar claim that the tax bill will make him “a big loser” may turn out to be true, although not in the way he meant it – polling shows that the public is opposed to the GOP tax plan by nearly a 2 to 1 margin.