Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Favors The Rich, New Analysis Finds

WASHINGTON — Higher-earning households would get the biggest boost from the tax cuts Republicans hope to pass this year, according to a new analysis of the legislation.

The top 20% of households, with incomes above $217,000, would reap 60% of the benefit of the lower taxes envisioned by the proposal next year, the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center found.

More than 84% of households would see a tax cut and just 4.4% would face an increase. The average household cut would amount to about $2,900. The lowest 20% of earners would take home 0.8% more money next year, on average, while the top 20% would see 3.8% more after taxes.

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That the tax cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act favor wealthier taxpayers comes as little surprise, since the bill’s tax provisions mostly are a continuation of across-the-board cuts Republicans first enacted in 2017. But the Tax Policy Center numbers do show that various pro-worker tax cuts President Donald Trump proposed during the campaign, including tax breaks on tips and overtime pay, aren’t enough to tilt the bill more favorably toward lower earners.

“These targeted deductions for tips and overtime only hit a relatively small fraction of people,” Joe Rosenberg, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, said in an interview, noting also that many tipped workers and wage earners already owe too little income tax to see a more significant benefit.

Republicans’ chief talking point about their tax bill is that if Congress fails to pass it, almost every household in America would face a tax hike as the temporary provisions of the 2017 law expire at the end of the year. Republicans made the provisions temporary in order to reduce the deficit impact of the cuts in official scoring by the Congressional Budget Office.

“The One Big Beautiful Bill stops the largest tax increase in history and focuses benefits on workers, families, farmers and small businesses,” chief tax writer Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.) said Tuesday.

The bill would tilt even more heavily in favor of wealthy households if Republican leaders give in to demands from blue-state Republicans to further enlarge a deduction for homeowners who pay hefty state and local taxes. It’s one of several sticking points as Republicans rush to move the bill through the House this week.

Several provisions of the bill are temporary, including Trump’s campaign proposals, small increases to the child tax credit and the standard deduction, and a handful of business breaks. In 2030, after those provisions expire, the share of households with a tax cut would fall from 84% to 70%.

Another way of analyzing the distribution of the tax provisions shows lower-income groups receiving a larger percentage tax cut than their richer peers. The Joint Committee on Taxation, an official congressional scorekeeper, said in an analysis last week that lower-income taxpayers would receive a larger reduction in their effective tax rate. In a separate estimate this week, the JCT noted that relatively few households in the lower tiers would receive more than $500 in tax cuts.

Rosenberg said the percentage change in after-tax income best captures “how much people are better or worse off” as a result of tax policy changes.