I should read more posts from Kevin Drum:
The Yahoo News reporter comes close to explaining what happened by noting that there were more returns in 2018 than 2017. As you might guess, this happens every year as the US population increases. So let’s take a look at personal income tax receipts adjusted for inflation and population growth … In reality, income tax receipts were down 2.6 percent in 2018 compared to 2017. What this means, unsurprisingly, is that when you cut tax rates you get less revenue. When you fail to account for things like inflation and population growth, nearly every year is an “all-time high.” But that’s meaningless.
Let’s turn to BEA Table 3.2. Federal Government Current Receipts and Expenditures. Personal current taxes (nominal) rose from $1613 billion in 2017 to $1620 billion in 2018 but current tax receipts fell from $2019 billion in 2017 to $1956 billion. You see our Yahoo News reporter was omitting the drop in corporate profits taxes which fell from $251 billion in 2017 to $147 billion in 2018. So even in nominal terms, we saw a decline in tax revenues. Kevin continues:
Someday our nation’s press is going to stop producing innumerate pieces on the economy and learn how to do simple adjustments that tell the real story of what’s going on.
Maybe our Yahoo News reporter can take this additional information on taxes and recast the absolute nominal figures into real per capita terms for us!
PGL:
Kevin is pretty popular. He does fail from time to time by making these statements. I guess the real question is “why” would he believe this particular tax cut is any different than previous tax cuts alleged to create increase revenues. My history on this is limited. I suspect these types of tax-cuts heavily skewed to a minority of taxpayers not into consumption have never increased revenues as they sock it away rather than spend in the short term. If it were to increase revenues in the short term, it must be spent on taxed items in the short term.
Someone had mentioned the SS tax break under Obama and Repubs wanted the tax back. Of course they wanted it back. After buying special Treasures the funds went into the GF to be used for expenditures such as Defense and not requiring a tax increase on their buddies the 1-percenters. The hope by Republicans is those special Treasuries would never be redeemed or rolled over into other Treasuries and the 1 percenters (their benefactors) plus corporations would never see a tax increase to fund it.
Cut SS and the need to pay back those treasuries disappears.
Also, fica is a regressive tax, so the rich do not pay it. Not a problem for GOPsterr.