From the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center (http://www.pennbpc.org):
A 50-state analysis of the GOP tax framework reveals that in Pennsylvania, the top 1 percent of taxpayers would receive a substantial tax cut worth $67, 970 while many upper middle class Pennsylvanians would face a tax increase.
The Washington-based Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy released the 50-state numbers today. While GOP leaders have pitched the plan as a tax cut for the middle class, the analysis shows that this is not true for the nation as a whole or for Pennsylvania. While most Pennsylvanians would receive a modest tax cut, on average that cut would amount to less than one percent of their income. The wealthiest 1 percent of the state’s residents, by contrast, would reap a financial windfall, receiving 49.7% of the total tax cuts going to Pennsylvania. Further, 15.6% of state taxpayers would endure a tax hike.
“This tax plan is bad for Pennsylvania and the country,” said Marc Stier, director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center. “At a time when incomes are rising for the very rich and relatively stagnant for everyone else, a plan that lavishes tax breaks on the top 1 percent, and pays for it in part by taxing others, should not be the starting point of our tax reform debate,” said Stier.
Stier added, “Because the plan eliminates the state and local tax deduction from federal income taxes, it is problematic for high state and local tax states and states that are in the middle like Pennsylvania. This feature of the plan pushes taxes up for 15.6% of all Pennsylvanians and almost 40% of upper-middle class Pennsylvanians with incomes between $106,000 and $550,000. Many people in this group would be willing to contribute more for education and improving the social safety net but not to give billionaires a tax cut.”
“No matter how the GOP messages this plan, it is nothing more than an upward redistribution of wealth,” said Alan Essig, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. “Not only does the plan boost the incomes of the wealthy with surgical precision, it also gives a pittance to most working people and it taxes some in the middle and upper-middle class more, essentially creating an even greater economic divide between the rich and everyone else.”
To read the entire report or get more details about Pennsylvania, go to www.itep.org/trumpgopplan.
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