Last week, I wrote an early reaction to the House Republican tax plan that suggested that its “big losers” would be upper middle class people in high-cost areas of high-tax states. I argued that a tax reform that raised their taxes could be justified if it met certain tests. (This tax reform gets mixed grades on those tests.)
I wrote then, though, that more analyses would have to be done to get a fuller picture of the bill. The ones that have been done so far suggest that a lot of households further down the income scale will face tax increases.
Check out the second chart here, for example. It shows that a quarter of tax filers with children making between $10,000 and $20,000 a year will get a tax increase under the Republican bill. (That’s even if some tax credits that the legislation slates to expire are renewed.) Also facing tax hikes: more than half of filers with children making between $20,000 and $30,000 a year, and nearly two-thirds of filers with children making between $30,000 and $40,000 a year. More than forty percent of parents, all in all, will see tax increases.
Republicans ought to consider this result unacceptable.