BUDGET/GOP/TAXES/TREASURY: “Trump administration officials pushed back Sunday [10-1-17] against criticism that the emerging GOP tax plan would provide its biggest benefits to the wealthy.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said on Sunday news programs that key details of the plan remained undecided and thus it was too early to know how individuals would benefit. But they said the plan is designed, above all, to cut taxes for middle-income earners and businesses…
Mr. Mulvaney said on CNN that it was impossible to determine how individual earners would fare under the plan because details—such as the dollar amounts that would determine each income-tax bracket—hadn’t been set.
The officials were mainly responding to an analysis from the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan group headed by a former Obama administration tax official. It showed the top 1% of households would get an average tax cut of $129,030 in 2018, boosting their after-tax incomes by 8.5% and lowering the share of U.S. taxes they would pay. Overall, Americans would get a 2.1% increase in after-tax income.”
-Josh Mitchell and William Mauldin, “Trump Administration Officials Defend GOP Tax Plan,” The Wall Street Journal online, Oct. 1, 2017 04:34pm