Trump’s Tax Plan Is Another Giant Boon for the Wealthy

Former President Donald Trump can't stop touting his 2017 "Trump tax cuts" as his signature economic achievement, claiming vast benefits delivered to average Americans. He's pledged to both continue and expand the cuts if elected president.

But new research shared exclusively with Rolling Stone and extensive existing studies reveal Trump's tax cuts have been an overwhelming bonanza for the wealthiest corporations and individuals, including the oil and gas industry. The benefits did not "trickle down" to most Americans.

The tax law's real beneficiaries are now investing millions of dollars in Trump's 2024 campaign — and financing PR efforts to ensure that their bounty grows.

As a share of after-tax income, the tax cuts for those at the top from the tax law — for both the top 1 percent and 5 percent of households — are more than triple the total value of the tax cuts received for people with incomes in the bottom 60 percent.

"The tax cut was justified with the argument that it would generate so much economic growth and investment and wage growth that low-income Americans would benefit," says Brendan Duke, senior director for economic policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. "The data is in, and we see no evidence of that. Any wage gains went to executives and the highest paid workers."

The law provided billions of dollars in tax breaks to the nation's largest corporations — boosting fossil fuel companies, in particular, and significantly reducing corporate tax collections. It allowed wealthy shareholders, executives, and the highest-paid workers to reap the largest rewards. The result exacerbated inequality and eliminated revenues that could otherwise have been used to support childcare, health care, energy justice, or other vital services.

"Trump is running on a failed policy," Duke says, noting that Vice President Kamala Harris "has laid out a policy that directly puts money in low and middle incomes families' pockets." Editor's picks

Earlier this month, Trump delivered a speech to the New York Economic Club, declaring, "We delivered an economic miracle." This was certainly true for the billionaires in the room. They included Linda McMahon, who headed Trump's Small Business Administration; hedge fund chief and Trump economic advisor John Paulson, who made a fortune betting on the subprime mortgage crisis; and former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, an investor who's known as "one of the best bottom feeders in the business," and who made a killing transporting fossil fuels and traded bankrupt fracking companies.

Each spent heavily to get Trump into office the first time around and are once again backing his play.

As billionaires, Trump's team are among the leading beneficiaries of the economic policies that they put into place. Since the passage of Trump tax cuts, billionaire wealth has more than doubled , up by more than $3.1 trillion, and the most money ever amassed by the nation's ultra wealthy.

The tax law "was specifically made to make wealthier people wealthier, and that's what it did," says Maura Quint, campaign director of Americans for Tax Fairness. Her organization calls the tax cuts "a reckless handout" that "undoubtedly contributed to billionaires' eye-popping wealth growth over the past nearly six years," almost none of which is likely to ever be taxed.

On Wednesday, ATF joined a rally on Capitol Hill kicking off a two-day citizen lobbying push in opposition to "the Trump Tax-Scam Extension." Fair Share America , a new coalition including AFT, the State Revenue Alliance , National Education Association, National Domestic Workers Alliance, Arizona Center for Empowerment, and Service Employees International Union are leading the effort. They were joined by Sen. Michael Bennett (D-Colo.), and Reps. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) and Gwen Moore (D-Wis.). Related

A forthcoming report from AFT, a preview of which was shared with Rolling Stone, finds that, in the law's first year, ExxonMobil received a $6 billion windfall from the Trump tax cuts. CEO Darren Woods praised the Tax cuts for creating an "improved business climate" and promised to create "thousands of jobs" and boost the economy in return. Instead, ExxonMobil has followed a larger fossil fuel industry trend , slashing its workforce by 14 percent from 2018 to 2023, and laying off nearly 10,000 employees.

Instead of passing on the savings to its workers, ExxonMobil has invested $9.1 billion on stock buybacks and $5 billion on dividends, "further enriching its already wealthy shareholders," Quint tells Rolling Stone. ExxonMobil's top executives received $375 million over those five years. CEO Darren Woods alone was paid $36 million in 2022, 210 times more than the company's median employee. While Exxon's median employee compensation rose by just 6.2 percent, Woods' salary rose by a whopping 44 percent.

The tax law not only expanded the gap between the rich and everyone else, but it also supercharged an already massive racial wealth divide between White households and households of color. "Not only are Black and Brown people just generally disadvantaged in the tax code, but in this tax code in particular," explains Solana Rice, co-founder and co-executive director of Liberation Generation.

To get the law passed, the corporate provisions — which included slashing the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent — were largely made permanent, while the portions that affect individuals were mostly temporary and are set to expire at the end of 2025. The next president will likely oversee a potentially massive rewrite of the U.S. tax code, and as The Wall Street Journal notes, "Tax policy marks one of the biggest gaps between the two major parties." This has gotten the attention of billionaires and corporate executives, who are pouring even more money into Trump's campaign and associated reelection efforts.

As Rolling Stone has reported, with Harris significantly outraising Trump's presidential campaign, he has become increasingly reliant on billionaire donors to fund Super PACs.

Trump's primary Super PAC has received a staggering $125 million from Timothy Mellon, heir to the Gilded age fortune. An organization tied to Miriam Adelson, the largest shareholder of casino giant Las Vegas Sands, has spent $74 million boosting Trump and attacking Harris. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is leading a Super PAC that's poured $57 million into the presidential race.

According to a new analysis by Accountable.US, shared exclusively with Rolling Stone, dark money groups led by corporate executives who helped shape the original Trump tax law have launched campaigns to protect and expand their tax cuts.

One of the organizations, the Club for Growth Foundation, has publicly proposed a suite of tax benefits for corporations it would like to see enacted in a second Trump administration. The Accountable.US report says most of the Club for Growth Foundation's board members "have personal stakes in protecting the Trump tax cuts."

The Club for Growth's Super PAC arm has been heavily financed by billionaires including Richard Uihlein and Jeff Yass . Uihlein, a shipping products magnate, was a major beneficiary of the Trump tax law, specifically its deduction for so-called "pass-through" entities. According to ProPublica, the provision promptly delivered Uihlein's family a $118 million deduction. (Uihlein is separately funding a Super PAC that has spent $15 million boosting Trump's presidential campaign.)

While Trump's Vice President Mike Pence has refused to back his 2024 bid, his dark money group, Advancing American Freedom has launched a $10 million campaign to promote the Trump tax cuts. According to the Accountable.US report, most of its board members are "corporate lobbyists, lawyers, or executives who could benefit from protecting the Trump tax cuts."

Trump is obliging his backers. He recently slammed Harris for proposing a tax on unsold assets held by the super rich, calling it "the craziest idea." The tax would surely target Musk, the world's richest man; he's said Harris' economic plans would lead to "bread lines and ugly shoes."

The former president is also dangling a new gift for his wealthy donors, pledging to cut corporate taxes even further, from 21 percent to 15 percent. Doing so would cost roughly $1 trillion over 10 years, according to a CAP analysis , which finds that this would give the largest 100 U.S. companies an annual total tax break of some $48 billion.

The largest U.S. oil companies alone — ExxonMobil, Chevron, Marathon Petroleum/ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66, and Valero Energy — would get an annual total tax cut of roughly $2.5 billion, CAP found.

I analyzed reporting from 17 of the largest US oil and gas companies in 2018 and found that in just its first year, the companies received a combined $25 billion in tax breaks from the tax bill. Five oil companies actually received federal income tax refunds as a result of the tax cuts, with American taxpayers sending rebate checks to Chevron, Apache, Marathon Oil, Hess, and Pioneer.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that in the second year of the tax cuts, 91 Fortune 500 companies paid no federal income taxes on their 2018 U.S. income as a result of the tax law. This is because their "effective" tax rate — the rate they actually pay — was far less than the statutory 21 percent. Once again, fossil fuel sectors reaped some of the highest rewards, with oil and gas, chemicals, and utilities all paying less than a 4.5 percent effective tax rate. Companies with the biggest bonanzas included Chevron, Halliburton, Occidental, Pioneer, and Duke Energy.

Harris has drawn necessary scorn for supporting increased oil and gas production, including reversing prior support for a national fracking ban. But the fossil fuel industry is under no illusion about which candidate and political party most aggressively support their interests, nor about what this election means to the industry's survival.

The fossil fuel industry remains not only one of the leading political funders this election cycle — giving almost entirely to Republican candidates and conservative causes — but it is also overwhelmingly devoted to the election of Donald Trump, giving more than almost any other industry in total direct campaign contributions. Leading oil magnates backing Trump include Timothy Dunn of CrownQuest Operating and Kelsey Warren , CEO of Energy Transfer LP.

On Monday morning, a methane gas (aka "natural gas") valve station owned and operated by Energy Transfer near Houston erupted in a massive fire from a pipeline, shooting flames hundreds of feet into the air near a children's playground. The blaze, still burning nearly 72 hours later, melted cars and homes, injured four people, and forced evacuations and shelter in place orders for at least two elementary schools and hundreds of neighborhood residents. The emergency services director of Deer Park, Jamie Galloway, told Rolling Stone that some 20 to 30 pipelines carrying gas and other petroleum products run through the same corridor about two miles from one of the nation's largest fossil fuel and petrochemical hubs.

Harold Hamm, the original "fracking king" and one of Trump's most vocal billionaire boosters reportedly told fellow oilmen as he solicited donations for Trump, "We've got to do this because it's the most important election in our lifetime."

Trump has reportedly called on oil executives to raise $1 billion for his reelection bid, telling them it would be a "deal" because of the taxation and regulation they could avoid.

Harris has proposed a different economic path . Harris has pledged to maintain parts of the 2017 tax law that benefit middle- to lower-income Americans, while increasing taxes on corporations and the wealthy. Corporate taxes would increase from 21 percent to 28 percent and companies would pay higher taxes on foreign profits. Only households making over $400,000 would have higher taxes, while everyone else would see their taxes lowered or unchanged.

Harris estimates that 100 million working and middle-class Americans will get a tax cut by restoring the Earned Income Tax Credit and the expanded Child Tax Credit, which "literally lifted millions of children out of poverty," said Rice, of Liberation in a Generation.

Harris intends to implement most of the tax policies put forward in President Joe Biden's most recent budget . Rather than increase fossil fuel handouts, she would seek to eliminate $35 billion in tax subsidies to the oil and gas industry and recover $75 billion in overseas fossil fuel income. However, her plan fails to eliminate recent subsidies for carbon capture and storage — a corporate boondoggle that delays meaningful climate action, props up the oil and gas industry, and harms local communities .

Harris would continue —and is expected to expand upon — policies enacted during her time as vice president that are providing trillions of dollars to tackle the climate crisis, address environmental injustice, hold polluters accountable, and build out the green energy economy . In 2023, clean energy employment increased by 142,000 jobs, growing at a rate twice as large as that for the rest of the energy sector and the U.S. economy overall.

"Our tax code is an opportunity to advance economic justice," said Rice. "There's a lot on the line in November."