Promise: The corporate tax break will “in the medium term boost the average U.S. household income annually in current dollars by at least $4,000, conservatively,” according to President Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers in October of 2017.
Reality: This prediction assumed a boom in business investment that never occurred. The windfall businesses received largely went to wealthy investors in the form of stock buybacks and dividends. Only one-fifth of the tax gains was directed toward capital and research and development expenditures, according to one study.