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It is remarkable how people equate the size of the refund - which is a numerical measure of how well government can actually plan withholdings according to their own tax rates - with how much they paid in tax. The entire marketing narrative around tax refunds makes most people think tax season is when they get a gift from the government, when it is nothing of the sort.
And the simple fact is, about 80% of the country paid less taxes because of the tax cut, and maybe 30% of the country understands that.
Give credit to NYT for actually pointing it out. I am hard on them, for good reason, but factual reporting about something Trump should get credit for is pretty remarkable and I will give credit where due.
We made more money and paid slightly less taxes (overall and as a percentage) than we did last year. We also seriously ramped up our withholding as soon as we heard about the tax cut.
It was really about the corporate rate reduction which were much larger. The tax cuts to the lower classes were just to make the lower classes shut up.
Are we suppose to see that as a good thing with our 21 trillion dollar deficit?
Absolutely.
More Americans paying less in tax = more Americans having slightly more freedom.
The debt is a number that represents failure on the part of the government, not the citizens. They get a ridiculously easy to predict (within 5% of the total) amount of revenue, and all they have to do to address that total debt and the annual deficit is SPEND LESS. The citizens, after they vote once every two years, are completely helpless on the point of spending bills, spending debate, spending law and spending behavior on the part of government. We can only sit back and watch, in horror, as year after year, no matter what the revenue is, government outspends it and then blames us for their failure.
It is not the citizens' job to bail out government for 70+ of financial malfeasance. You know how I know this? Hauser's Law. No matter what government tells the American people about how much we need to increase their funding, we all agree that they can have around 17.3% of the GDP. No matter how they structure it, sell, threaten, coerce or cajole us, we are pretty firm on our 17.3% of the GDP. That's their allowance because we said so.
If they have deficit and debt after a 70+ year established pattern of our revenue behavior, then that is 100% on them for being extraordinarily awful at their one freaking job.
If we as citizens fail in some way regarding the deficit and debt, it's that we think voting can change the behavior, when clearly only violence will ever be a proper motivator. It isn't to that point ye, but eventually, they'll take this "blame them for our mistakes" thing too far, and that proper motivator will rear it's head.
It was really about the corporate rate reduction which were much larger. The tax cuts to the lower classes were just to make the lower classes shut up.
If you don’t pay taxes, how can you get any tax cut???
While a I agree with you, the reason you don’t see the lift in poll numbers is taxes are not in the top 3 priorities for most Americans right now. The “cut taxes” band wagon is slowing and concerns for healthcare, national and personal debt, education, and retraining people for upcoming lost jobs due to automation are the main issues talked about.
Many of us in the south live in states that have cut taxes for 20+ years but the quality of live did not change for most. More jobs or businesses did not appear any quicker than other regions in the country. Recently we have seen a pushback against some of the cuts to education funding, infrastructure cuts, and complaints against states replacing taxes with neomourous “fees” to do anything.
When I look at my federal taxes compared to all the fees at local levels to make up for education and healthcare cuts, I end up at a wash. I got a tax cut but I paid more for my professional license, property tax, fishing license, increased cell phone fees, increased cable state fees, and many other fees set by the state because they are attempting to recupe the cut money. So in essence we didn’t net anything but the politicians can still say “ I cut your taxes”, it’s all hogwash.
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