Trump’s tax cuts for Betsy DeVos and the very rich are being paid for by education cuts
The education secretary will testify before Congress Wednesday about the 'tough choices' in her proposed $6.7 billion education spending cut.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos will testify before Congress on Wednesday about her priorities for the department just weeks after she proposed billions of dollars in cuts for education spending in fiscal year 2020.
DeVos has labeled the cuts “tough choices,” but new analysis from the Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAPAF) shows DeVos’ personal savings from the 2017 GOP tax bill alone could have covered a significant chunk of them.
(ThinkProgress is an editorially independent news site housed within CAPAF.)
According to her 2018 personal financial disclosures, DeVos’ income was somewhere between $46.8 million and $109 million, mostly stemming from LLCs, limited partnerships, and distributive shares. CAPAF’s analysis estimates the Trump tax cuts likely saved her $10 million or more in the last year alone.
Seth Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who focuses on federal tax and budget policy, said DeVos was “illustrative of the windfall that extremely wealthy business owners were handed in 2017.”
“Because her family’s company, Amway, is — as we found out from a letter they sent to Congress — structured as an S-corporation,” he explained, DeVos’ holdings were eligible for a special new deduction created in the tax bill. The tax changes Trump and Republicans implemented in 2017 actually reduced the top rate for these types of holdings from 39.6% to 29.6% taxation.
“They sold this new deduction as a small business tax cut, but the kinds of businesses that really benefit are Amway, the Trump Organization, and their owners,” Hanlon said.
Though Trump’s Treasury Department initially claimed the tax cuts would pay for themselves through growth, they have not. Corporate tax revenue has plummeted since CONTINUE READING: Trump’s tax cuts for Betsy DeVos and the very rich are being paid for by education cuts – ThinkProgress