The Last Americans Really Paying Taxes

Annie Lowrey: “Donald Trump is altering the tax code for the benefit of millionaires and billionaires. That is the simplest conclusion to draw from the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act earlier this summer, and not an incorrect one. Yet the bill also does something stranger and harder to parse, and something that might prove a more perilous threat to the country’s finances in the long term.”

“Republicans are riddling the tax code with carve-outs and loopholes, targeting workers at both ends of the income spectrum. The OBBBA creates ways for waiters and consultants, truck drivers and technology executives, to avoid taxation—but not so much the back-office managers and accountants working alongside them.”

“This shift stands to reduce horizontal equity, increase tax-rate dispersion, and shrink the tax base, as economists put it. In plain English, it will result in families with similar incomes facing wildly different tax bills, while subjecting a smaller share of earnings to taxes in the first place. Indeed, the legislation begs Americans rich and poor to game the system, structuring their businesses, employment contracts, and workweeks to duck the IRS. If and when America’s bill comes due, comfortable pencil-pushers might be the last people paying reliable, predictable sums to the tax man.”