In this week’s fact-checking video, CNN’s Jake Tapper examines a false claim by former Vice President Joe Biden that “all of” the tax cuts signed into law by President Donald Trump “went to folks at the top and corporations that pay no taxes.”
“$2 trillion tax cut last year. Did you feel it? Did you get anything from it? Of course not. Of course not. All of it went to folks at the top and corporations that pay no taxes,” Biden said during his first official campaign speech on April 29 in Pittsburgh since announcing his third run for president.
But as Tapper points out, although polls show that most people think the Trump-backed tax law, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, didn’t result in a tax cut for them, the reality is that for most people, it did.
The Tax Policy Center estimates that about 65 percent of households paid less in federal income tax in 2018 under the TCJA than they would have paid under the old tax laws, while about 6 percent paid more. Among those who got a tax cut, it averaged about $2,200. The business-backed Tax Foundation estimates 80 percent of those filing federal income taxes saw some sort of a cut in 2018 as a result of the TCJA,while about 8 percent saw a tax increase.
It’s true that corporations got a big tax cut, and that those with higher incomes reaped greater benefits. A higher percentage of high-income taxpayers got a tax cut, and that tax cut was, on average, greater than the tax cuts for those with lower incomes (both in dollar amounts and as a percentage of after-tax income). But still, as we said, most people got some kind of tax cut in 2018 as a result of the law.
For more on that and other false or misleading claims made by Biden during his speech on April 29, see our story “Biden’s Campaign Kickoff Claims.”
See all of our fact-checking videos done in collaboration with CNN’s “State of the Union” on our website.