The following is a script for a story you can watch here.

When Donald Trump was president, his signature piece of legislation (before he abandoned passing bills altogether) was the 2017 Tax Cuts & Jobs Act, better known as the Trump tax cuts.

The rich benefited: a slashed corporate tax rate boosted executive salaries… but failed to trickle down to workers. And the personal income tax cuts were skewed several orders of magnitude towards the top 1 percent of earners.

Many of the Trump tax cut provisions are going to sunset in 2025…which is where *Project* 2025 steps in…

The 922-page handbook for the next conservative presidency takes a big swing at tax policy, and the changes suggested would mean more taxes for the average American family, widening the massive income inequality gap. We’ll explain how:

In 2024, we had 7 tax brackets with a top rate of 37% and a bottom rate of 10.

But millions of Americans don’t make enough to pay federal income tax… and about 40 percent of American households end up not owing any when they apply for government tax credits and deductions. But not under Project 2025.

Project 2025 calls for quote, “simplifying” the tax structure by “enacting a simple two-rate individual tax system of 15 percent and 30 percent that eliminates most deductions, credits and exclusions.”

The 30-percent rate would kick in at earnings over 168 thousand dollars a year.

So depending on your current bracket, you could be taxed more or less under this plan – but for millions of working class Americans, taxes would shoot up.

By raising the *floor* of our tax brackets but lowering the *ceiling,* Project 2025 would shift the country’s tax burden from the rich to middle- and lower-class Americans…

According to analysis from the Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan policy institute, under this new system, the average family of four would see a tax increase of 2 thousand 9 hundred 85 dollars, while households reporting over $10 MILLION dollars in income would see a tax CUT of 1.5 MILLION DOLLARS.

And to address the second part of that quote – eliminating “most deductions credits and exclusions…”

Tax credits work like government incentivizes, allowing citizens to write-off expenses that are generally in society’s interest.

They just say “eliminate most…” so which ones?

Eliminate the child tax credit – which was expanded by the American Rescue Plan in 2021 –meant to give tax breaks to parents with children under 17? Sure. It was only used by 36 million households in 2022.

Eliminate the American Opportunity tax credit – which allows people to write off tuition costs and school supplies. Why not!

Eliminate climate credits included in President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. ABSOLUTELY!

Those tax breaks -- meant to encourage folks to live climate conscious lives -- have been popular since they were introduced…

According to new data released by the Treasury Department … 3.5 million Americans used at least one of Biden’s green subsidies to build solar panels or make their homes more energy efficient.

And everything we’ve gone over so far is jammed into just ONE sentence in this massive tome. Let’s look at some other suggestions:

They suggest decreasing the corporate tax rate to 18 percent. It had already been cut to 21% by the Trump Tax Cuts. It sat at 35 before that.

They call for the repeal of the excise tax on drug manufacturers, which would destroy any government price controls on prescription medication.

They call for a new consumption task to make up for revenue lost by cutting taxes for the rich – and float the idea of a national sales tax.

And they call for a cap of 12,000 dollars on untaxed employee benefits that companies can write off for deductions. This would disincentivize employers from offering more comprehensive health benefits…

((ON CAM))

According to KFF, the average family plan costs 5 thousand dollars MORE than that.  

So Project 2025 is interested in BOTH…

making employer-provided healthcare more costly for the companies…

And making private healthcare more costly for the patient.

This thing [GESTURES AT BOOKS] really does do it all!

Former President Trump, for his part, has been touting another brilliant tax scheme. This was him Thursday, at a press conference in Mar-a-Lago.

TRUMP: We're not going to charge tax to our to Social Security, the seniors. We're not going to do it. We're not going to charge and also tax, I say the two things, we're going to have no tax on seniors, social security, and we're going to have no tax on tips, very simple.

Both of these *sound* like a sweet deal but when you read between the lines, they don’t add up:

Removing a tax on tips, the Center for American Progress says, would do little for waiters and waitresses but deliver BIG to executives who could transform their salary into a tip-based model to skirt taxes.

As far as tax on social security, a majority of low and middle income Americans on Social Security don’t earn enough to be taxed on their benefits – but rich folks do. Higher earners who still receive Social Security but would benefit the most.

So these policies wouldn’t benefit you in the short-term. But would they benefit you in the long-term? Also no.

According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, eliminating taxes on Social Security would accelerate the program’s insolvency by a year, to 2032. And it would bring Medicare to insolvency in 2030, 6 years ahead of the current rate. It would also increase the deficit by over a trillion dollars.

Well… if the policies don’t benefit you. And they don’t benefit the government. And they don’t benefit average American families. Who DO they benefit?

I’ll let you guess.