Congress Plans Huge Tax Breaks for Corporations at the Expense of Working People

Last week, the House Republicans released their tax bill titled, The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. “Don’t be fooled by the name,” said Legislative and Political Director Judy Beard. “The foundation of the legislation is a massive corporate tax break and includes many provisions that will hurt working families. It is not designed to create jobs with a living wage and good benefits, but to enrich the corporate elite and the billionaire class.”

Wall Street and the corporate elite will be gifted with a tax rate reduction from 35% to 20% – this alone will give the six largest banks more than $6 billion dollars of increased profit annually. The tax bill would eliminate the estate tax – equaling $269 billion dollars in lost revenue over the next decade – solely for benefit of the wealthiest 0.2% of households.

If passed, this corporate tax break will drain needed resources for education, medical research and environmental protection. It will also lead to cuts in vital social programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. Remember, the finalized 2018 Fiscal Year budget has $5 trillion in budget cuts, including $1.5 trillion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, which will be used to pay for a tax break to benefit large corporations and the richest 1% of Americans.

Other provisions in The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that would directly hurt unions and working families include:

• Capping the State and Local (property) Tax deduction, and eliminating the State and Local (income) Tax deduction;
• Repealing the medical expense deduction, including nursing home care;
• Eliminating U.S. taxes on offshore profits – encouraging the continued outsourcing of U.S. jobs;
• Tightening the rules for claiming the child tax credit, requiring a “work-eligible Social Security number” which is aimed at punishing immigrant parents;
• Cutting the mortgage rate deduction in half;
• Repealing the student loan interest deduction.

Postal Pay and Benefits Still at Risk

The corporate tax proposal will also increase the deficit by $1.5 trillion which will then be used as an excuse to attack the benefits of postal and other workers. Postal workers have seen time and again that anti-union lawmakers use the deficit as justification to slash postal pay and benefits, targeting our retirement and health benefits in particular. We just defeated such an attack in the 2018 budget last month. This tax bill will make the next proposed cuts even  deeper and the next fight that much harder to win.

Take Action

The House leadership hopes to move this bill quickly through the House of Representatives, it is already being considered in the Ways & Means Committee and could make it to the full House as soon as next week. Dial 844-813-4060 to be connected to your member of Congress’s office and tell them to vote no on the tax bill. “Working families should not be used as piggy banks to enrich big business, big banks and billionaires.” said President Mark Dimondstein.