9 Things You Need to Know About the Republican Tax Overhaul

By Samuel Smith, Deputy Managing Editor Thursday, December 21, 2017

U.S. President Donald Trump holds sample tax forms as he promotes a newly unveiled Republican tax plan with House Republican leaders on November 02, 2017. | (Photo: Reuters / CARLOS BARRIA)

9. Who benefits the most?

There is debate about whether this tax bill will be beneficial to middle class and poorer families or will mostly benefit the top one percent.

Richard Reeves, co-director of the Center on Children and Families at the Washington-based think tank the Brookings Institution, argues in an op-ed that the that the richest of the rich benefit the most from his bill.

"In the Senate version of the bill, on which the compromise version is largely based, families in the middle 20 percent of the income ladder will see a tax cut of less than $1,000 next year," Reeves wrote. "Those in the top 1 percent will see an average $28,000 cut."

However, Chris Edwards, director of the Cato Institute's center on tax policy studies, argues in an op-ed that the middle class will benefit most from the bill. He pointed to Joint Committee on Taxation distributional analysis of the bill for the calendar year 2019.

"Middle-income households will receive by far the largest percentage income tax cuts in 2019," Edwards wrote.