This Tax Day, most Americans will end up paying less to the federal government, but many of them are convinced they’re actually paying more. Liberals have leveraged their power in the media to pull off an impressive and terrifying misinformation campaign, and even The New York Times had to admit it.
The benefits of the Trump tax cuts have been powerful and broad. A whopping 82 percent of middle-class Americans saw a tax cut last year, with an average savings of more than $1,260. A full 90 percent of workers saw an increase in pay after the IRS adjusted withholding tables to reflect the new law. Last year, wages grew an average of 3.3 percent, the best in a decade. The Republican tax cuts accelerated job growth by nearly 25 percent and opportunity zones led investors to put their money into distressed communities. Finally, the Trump tax cuts doubled the child tax credit, saving working families an estimated $100 billion.
These aren’t just Republican talking points. The Tax Policy Center estimated that 82 percent of middle-income Americans will receive a tax cut for an average reduction of individual income taxes of $1,260 in 2018, increasing after-tax incomes by 1.7 percent. Lower-middle-class households saw the largest tax cut as a percentage of their income, The Wall Street Journal reported. The new withholding tables lower the amount of money employers withhold from workers’ paychecks, according to USA Today. According to the Treasury Department, 90 percent of Americans saw an increase in their take-home pay. The Bureau Of Labor Statistics reported a 3.3 percent average wage increase.
CNBC reported the wage growth for October and December 2018 was tied for the best since April 2009. The Bureau Of Economic Analysis reported that real GDP grew by 3.1 percent from the fourth quarter of 2017 to the fourth quarter of 2018. The opportunity zones provision is helping struggling communities, and the child tax credit is tailored to help lower-income families.
Yet Americans are skeptical of the Trump tax cuts. According to the RealClearPolitics average, only 36.3 percent of Americans approve of the cuts, while 40.8 percent disapprove of them, giving the Trump tax cuts a negative 4.5 percent. Only 17 percent of Americans think their taxes were cut, according to a Wall Street Journal poll from earlier this month.
“Ever since President Trump signed the Republican-sponsored tax bill in December 2017, independent analyses have consistently found that a large majority of Americans would owe less because of the law. Preliminary data based on tax filings has shown the same,” Ben Casselman and Jim Tankersley reported at The New York Times.
“Yet as the first tax filing season under the new law wraps up on Monday, taxpayers are skeptical. A survey conducted in early April for The New York Times by the online research platform SurveyMonkey found that just 40 percent of Americans believed they had received a tax cut under the law. Just 20 percent were certain they had done so. That’s consistent with previous polls finding that most Americans felt they hadn’t gotten a tax cut, and that a large minority thought their taxes had risen — though not even one in 10 households actually got a tax increase,” Casselman and Tankersley reported.
If America has benefitted from the Trump tax cuts, why do so many Americans think they’re losing out? Even The New York Times had to admit this is the result of liberal bias: “To a large degree, the gap between perception and reality on the tax cuts appears to flow from a sustained — and misleading — effort by liberal opponents of the law to brand it as a broad middle-class tax increase.”
Democrats pushed a sustained public misinformation campaign, branding the tax cuts a “GOP Tax Scam.” Amid suggestions that Americans have no property rights, they noted that long-term projections suggested Americans’ taxes will increase in 2026, when temporary provisions of the law expire. This is standard practice, and most tax cuts are extended, but Democrats falsely claimed that the Trump tax cuts were actually a tax increase.
Gullible media outlets and activists, anxious to paint Trump in the worst of all possible lights, leapt to repeat these false talking points, even as Americans overwhelmingly benefitted from the tax cuts.
Matthew Yglesias, a liberal writer for The American Prospect, The Atlantic, Slate, and a co-founder and editor at Vox, bragged about orchestrating this misinformation campaign.
“Nobody likes to give themselves credit for this kind of messaging success, but progressive groups did a really good job of convincing people that Trump raised their taxes when the facts say a clear majority got a tax cut,” Yglesias tweeted.
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1115402932093095937
When even The New York Times is admitting this Democrat messaging is an outright scam, perhaps Americans should learn not to trust the liberal talking points. Trump has helped tens of millions of Americans through the very tax cuts liberals demonized. It’s time for Americans to realize the truth, reject the lies, and show some gratitude to Trump.
By the way, two 2020 Democrats — Sen.s Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — shouted the lie that the tax cuts are a “heist.”
In 2020, grateful Americans should remember when they go to the polls that Trump cut taxes — and they should remember the blatant lies Democrats used to demonize a helpful policy.
Follow Tyler O’Neil, the author of this article, on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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