Trump’s Dubious $4,000 Claim

Would American households really see an average income increase of $4,000 a year if President Donald Trump succeeds in cutting the corporate income tax? Don’t count on it. This claim is dubious at best.

Consider this simple arithmetic:

• There were 125,819,000 households in the U.S. last year, according to the Census Bureau. An average increase of $4,000 for each household would amount to a total income gain of more than $503 billion annually.
• But the U.S. collected just $297 billion in corporate income taxes in fiscal year 2017, which ended Sept. 30, according to the U.S. Treasury.

So let’s say that Trump’s proposal to drop the top corporate rate to 20 percent (from the current 35 percent) reduces the corporate tax accordingly by $127 billion.