As Americans filed their federal tax returns this Monday, President Joe Biden’s White House put out a statement promoting his plan to increase taxes.
It adopted Biden’s typical class-war rhetoric, claiming to protect the incomes of middle-class Americans, while increasing taxes on corporations and the “rich.”
“President Biden’s plan would give tax relief to tens of millions of families—continuing the tax relief families are seeing this Tax Day—and he’d apply new minimum taxes on billionaires and large corporations to make sure they’re paying their fair share,” said a statement issued by the White House.
The truth: The Biden administration is already collecting taxes at a faster pace than any previous administration.
In fiscal 2021, which ran through September, the federal government collected a record $4,045,979,000,000 in taxes. That was $441,674,390,000 more than the $3,604,304,610,000 (in constant September 2021 dollars) that the federal government collected in taxes in fiscal 2020.
In the first six months of fiscal 2022 (October through March), the federal government collected $2,121,987,000,000—the most it has ever collected in the first half of a fiscal year.
As of now, the Treasury is projecting that it will collect a total of $4,436,626,000,000 in taxes this fiscal year—and, thus, set another record.
But that is not enough for Biden.
According to the Treasury’s projections, while the federal government will collect a record $4,436,626,000,000 in taxes this year, it will also spend $5,851,576,000,000. Thus, it will run a deficit of $1,414,950,000,000.
Biden, however, does not want to increase taxes to eliminate or diminish the deficit. He wants to increase taxes to spend more money.
Under his budget proposal, federal tax revenues would climb to $4,874,415,000,000 in fiscal 2024, but federal spending would climb to $6,075,220,000,000—resulting in a deficit of $1,200,805,000,000.
By 2028, when he theoretically could be serving his last year in office (and celebrating his 86th birthday), Biden proposes a federal government that would tax away $5,969,000,000,000 from the American people but then spend $7,502,000,000,000. That would result in a deficit of $1,533,000,000,000.
In Biden’s fiscal vision, the federal government will never see another year when its deficit is less than $1 trillion.
In reality, Biden’s fiscal plan would permanently implant a larger federal government on future generations of Americans, and thus permanently increase the tax burden on future generations.
“The president believes that profitable corporations shouldn’t pay a lower tax bill than a middle-class family, and shouldn’t be able to avoid taxes by shipping jobs and profits overseas,” said the statement the White House issued on Monday. “The president is championing a 15% corporate minimum tax here and around the world to ensure that no large profitable corporation gets away with paying $0 in taxes and reversing the massive 2017 Republican tax cuts, by increasing the corporate tax rate to 28%.”
In 2017, President Donald Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which cut the corporation income tax rate, starting in 2018, from a top level of 35% to a flat rate of 21%.
According to the Treasury, the federal government collected $299.571 billion in corporation income taxes in fiscal 2016 and $297.048 billion in fiscal 2017, the last two years before Trump’s tax cut took effect. In the next three years, corporation income tax revenues fell to a lower level ($204.7 billion, $230.2 billion, and $211.8 billion, respectively).
But then, in fiscal 2021, corporation income tax revenues climbed to $371.8 billion, which exceeded what they had been in the last two years before the rate was cut.
If Biden were to succeed in increasing the corporation income tax to 28%, it would impose increased costs on every American consumer who purchases products—with their own after-tax income—from the corporations Biden targets.
If Biden increases the federal tax on corporations that make automobiles, it will increase the prices Americans pay for cars.
If Biden increases the federal tax on corporations that produce food products and own grocery stores, it will increase what Americans must pay to feed their families.
Biden is not a champion of the middle class. He is a champion of big government.
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