Tuesday, December 19, 2017
Final
Tax Plan Makes Shortchanging Indiana’s Middle-Class & Working Families
Permanent
Last Chance for Indiana’s
Congressional Delegation to Make a Stand for Average Hoosiers
The final tax plan released late on Friday and set to be
voted on today gives middle-class and working Hoosier families no reason to
celebrate. The bill up for final approval by the House and Senate still has the
same fundamental flaws: upside-down benefits to the wealthiest, corporations,
and foreign investors, meanwhile creating an unsustainable deficit to be balancedon
the backs of vulnerable working families. Let
Senator Young, Senator Donnelly, and your U.S. Representative know that you
will hold them accountable for their vote.
• In the first year, the wealthiest 1% of Indiana
earners will receive $48,840 in tax cuts, more than many Hoosier households
earn in a year. Meanwhile, the bottom 60% of Indiana’s families will get cuts
that average out to $9 a week, about enough for a small plain cake from
Wal-Mart.
• By 2027, most of the tax credits for
middle-class & working families go away and the average Hoosier earner inthe bottom 60% will see a permanent tax hike of $140 every year. But the
wealthiest earners will continue to pocket nearly $5,000 every year. Over 1 million Hoosiers will see that permanent tax hike under the final bill, 713,380 of whom are in the bottom 60% of Indiana earners.
• The winners and losers chosen by the bill
heavily favor the foreign investors and corporations in addition to the
wealthiest earners, incentivizing
further offshoring of U.S. jobs.
• Despite modest improvements to the Child Tax
Credit in the final bill, 230,000
Hoosier children will receive only a token increase of $75 or less annually, and will be left out of the full
$1,000-per-child that higher income families will receive.
• The final bill still threatens
access to health care for 245,000 Hoosiers by eliminating the ACA
individual mandate, cutting $519 million in Medicare funding for Indiana in
2018 and causing an estimated $1,360 increase in marketplace premiums by 2019.
• Perhaps the worst permanent change from this tax
bill would be the nearly $1.5
trillion added to federal budget deficits, a shortfall that has some in
Congress already looking to slash proven poverty-fighting programs like SNAP,
Medicaid, and job training.
