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releasereturns

Tax Day 2019: It’s Time to Release the Returns, Repeal the Tax Scam, and Reinvest in America

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It’s Tax Day again, when we all come together to chip in our fair share toward the cost of government. That is—except for the tax cheats and corporations so adept at wiggling out of their tax bills they pay $0, or worse, get a refund check from Uncle Sam. Big name companies like Netflix, Amazon, IBM, and GM are just tip of the iceberg when it comes to large, profitable corporations that paid no taxes or got money back from the government last year.

The need for a real tax code overhaul has never been greater, especially since the partisan tax giveaway package that was rushed through the process without hearings or proper input from the public. It was the product of K Street lobbying, with Public Citizen research showing that more than 60 percent of the D.C. lobby corps tried to influence the tax package—more than 7,000 individual lobbyists.

President Trump and the GOP made a lot of false promises about the 2017 tax giveaway package—which voters rightly saw as a scam, and it remains very unpopular to this day. It’s no surprise since the tax cut legislation has done much to enrich wealthy shareholders, corporate CEOs and Wall Street bankers and while average Americans have felt little assistance from the changes. And, the hole in the budget these tax cuts are already leaving will lead to declining services for families that are suffering and fewer health care dollars for seniors and others who need care.

Before we get to next year’s Tax Day, we need to do three things: release Trump’s tax returns, repeal the provisions of the 2017 tax giveaway bill that enriched the wealthy and corporations, and redesign the tax code in a way the will create new revenues to reinvest in American communities.

Release the Returns

Public Citizen’s members and supporters, have been clamoring for the release of Trump’s tax returns since he first announced his candidacy for office, including countless activists participating in Tax March events across the country two years ago. Yet, Trump has refused to disclose his tax information. This, despite decades of precedent set by his predecessors.

That’s why we were so pleased that the text of H.R. 1, the For the People Act –the sweeping ethics, campaign finance and voting rights reform package made it clear that future presidential and vice-presidential candidates and office holders will be required by law to disclose tax information moving forward, including business and individual income tax returns. Even though HR 1 passed with overwhelming support in the House last month, we must not be made to wait until the For the People Act is signed into law to determine how his tax policy maneuvers have personally benefited the president.

The Ways and Means Committee Chair Richard Neal (D-Mass.) recently, after much deliberation, used the power granted to the committee under Sec. 6103(f)(1) of the Internal Revenue Code to request the past six years of President Trump’s personal and some of his business tax returns from the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury Department. The letter of the law is clear: It says that the Treasury Secretary shall furnish the returns to the Committee upon written request. There is no wiggle room.

Yet the first deadline set by Chairman Neal came and went without Sec. Mnuchin having provided the returns. That is inexcusable. Now Chairman Neal has more than generously provided a new deadline of April 23. However, it’s outrageous Treasury did not meet the first deadline– so Public Citizen is joining allies for a rally today at 5pm outside of the IRS to demand that they not take any additional time but that they release the returns now!

The Ways and Means Committee needs Trump’s tax return information to perform proper oversight into exactly how much he personally financially gained by pushing for specific tax changes and signing the 2017 bill into law. Most of Trump’s hundreds of businesses are organized as limited liability companies (LLCs) and those types of entities received an extremely generous new deduction. Not to mention the need for oversight into the many questions about the president’s possible financial connections to Russia and other foreign powers that may have influenced policy decisions. Also, with oversight authority over the Internal Revenue Service, the Ways and Means Committee must investigate whether the agency has been properly auditing the president.

As much as Trump and his administration appear to be digging their heels in on not releasing the returns,

To quote @AOC – Congress didn’t ask you.

Repeal Tax Giveaways to the Rich and Corporations

As a basic matter, we must repeal the 2017 tax cut legislation that showered millionaires and billionaires with ridiculous handouts, while adding nearly $2 trillion to the deficit. The legislation included huge giveaways for corporations and also worsened the unfair tax advantages that multinational companies have over Main Street businesses by giving provisions like an extra 50% off coupon to multinational corporations that book profits to offshore subsidiaries. And, Big Banks got huge tax windfalls at the same time that they are raking in record profits.

Yet, how did these companies use that extra money? By spending more than 140 times as much on buying back their own stock than on increasing wages for workers. We need to fix that by increasing the tax rate for corporations and closing loopholes that benefit Wall Street investors and high-paid CEOs over average Americans. We should also discourage outsourcing of jobs and investment by taxing profits at least at the same rate when they are earned by foreign subsidiaries, while making sure they don’t “invert” and re-incorporate in low tax countries.

Reinvest in American Communities

Public Education, health care for seniors and low income individuals, aid for the less physically and mentally able, providing nutrition assistance to the hungry, rebuilding roads and water pipes, tackling climate change and growing green jobs– the list of communities’ needed investments is endless. As time goes by, these needs are only going to increase. Corporations and banks used to pull more of their weight when it comes to taxes, they must pick up the slack. And, by asking the very wealthy to pay more of their fair share, we will have more money to give a hand up to those who need it most.

We can do this by taxing the wealth of millionaires and billionaires, by strengthening the estate tax, and increasing the marginal tax rates for the richest among us. At the same time, a small tax on Wall Street trades of 10 cents per $100 traded could create $777 billion in new revenues over the next decade, repaying America for crashing the economy while calming the markets by tamping down risky high-speed trading. Combined, new tax progressive policies could create trillions in new revenues that could be reinvested in our communities. Instead of turning our back on hard-hit areas, we need to create equal opportunity and provide a level playing field for all Americans.

But, once we fill all of the loopholes and otherwise strengthen the code, we will need equally strong enforcement. Right now, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is an over-politicized and under-resourced agency, and it is focused in the wrong direction. We also need to make paying taxes as easy as possible by having IRS have its own free-file program and by using return-free filing, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has proposed. Also, audits and other enforcement by the IRS should concentrate more on big-money taxpayers and corporations to maximize the agency’s bang for the buck.  And, the job of the IRS also has an impact on our democracy since it oversees tax status of nonprofits, and it must provide clear rules regarding political activity. That’s a lot of work on an agency that has seen steep cuts to its budget over recent years.

The first step toward a fairer tax code is getting Trump’s tax returns so Congress has all of the information it needs for accountability including investigations into who benefited the most from the 2017 tax changes, specifically one supposedly wealthy owner of real estate businesses. Then, Congress needs to go back to square one so that the American people can properly weigh in as our nation’s leaders take the time needed to properly craft a more progressive tax code that benefits everyone not just a privileged few

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Sunshine Week: How “Free” is the Information?

This week marks Sunshine Week, when the media, civil society organizations and the government all join together to celebrate transparency and the power of open government. Named in reference to the famous quote from Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, “sunlight is the best of disinfectants,” Sunshine Week is focused on highlighting how access to information allows watchdog groups like Public Citizen to hold government officials accountable and ensure they are acting in public’s best interest.

One of the most important open government tools in our arsenal is the landmark right-to-know law, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), enacted by Congress in 1966. FOIA enables Americans to learn what the government is up to and hold it responsible for its actions. FOIA does that by giving the public an enforceable right to access government records, subject to nine narrow exemptions.

Regrettably, the government’s implementation of the law has not been uniform, including overuse of exemptions by certain agencies. Unsurprisingly, this trend looks to have worsened under the Trump administration. In fact, Public Citizen and our allies were so frustrated with the lack of transparency, we took to the streets during last year’s Sunshine Week, working with the esteemed projection artist Robin Bell, to highlight how Trump has “eclipsed” the sunshine of open government laws.

Unfortunately, the executive branch’s lackluster record on properly disclosing information to the public is still true this year. With agency resources constantly on the budgetary chopping block, there is no need for them to be wasting government resources to fight in court to try to keep information secret when it rightfully should be disclosed to the American people.

In an important step toward checking these abuses by the executive branch, the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee held a hearing yesterday to examine how FOIA has fared in the Trump era. As an organization that also litigates to enforce FOIA, Public Citizen has faced examples of alarming limitations on information disclosures that we have fought in the courts or opposed during the rulemaking process. So, we applaud this important move by the legislative branch to keep an eye on whether the executive branch has been properly been fulfilling its requirements under FOIA.

Below are a few examples of how the government has not been properly implementing FOIA. Sadly, these are just a drop in the bucket when it comes to attempts by the government to block requestors from obtaining information.

Not Proactively Posting Information

Under the Freedom of Information Act, certain types of information are supposed to be posted automatically by agencies in electronic format, without waiting for a FOIA request. These include final opinions and orders that resulted from FOIA disputes. Additionally, agencies must proactively provide copies of records that have already been released to someone else, requested three or more times, or that the agency determines are likely to be requested again. Unfortunately, not all agencies have been implementing the proactive disclosure requirements of the law as they should.

For example, the Board of Immigration Appeals is an entity that hears appeals on immigration matters, but does not automatically make all of its decisions available in its online reading room. It has thousands of opinions that it has not published online. This hampers the work of immigration attorneys since they and their clients don’t have the freedom to view these decisions, as is required by FOIA, but the government has access to those unpublished opinions. Represented by Public Citizen Litigation Group, New York Legal Assistance Group—one of the largest immigrant services providers in New York City and which represents clients in immigration cases—was forced to sue. The case is ongoing.

One additional twist to agencies’ lack of proactive disclosure is that some courts have held that when a litigant wins a case regarding information that was not automatically disclosed publicly, the “remedy” in the case is simply to provide the information to the plaintiff, not to publicly post the information as it should have been done in the first place. Therefore, Congress should address this bad caselaw by amending FOIA to make clear that courts can enforce FOIA’s requirement of public posting of certain categories of information.

Overuse of Exemptions

Though the FOIA Improvement Act, passed in 2016, did fix several problems with the government hiding behind the law’s listed exemptions as a way to escape disclosing information, many problems still exist. Generally, Public Citizen believes that the nine specific limits on what is allowable for disclosure under FOIA should be weighed against what is best for society—a “public interest balancing test” in legal terms. Currently, courts only apply the test to a couple of the exemptions. But, should information regarding corporate commercial information or government deliberations actually outweigh providing information to watchdogs when it could save lives or otherwise significantly improve a harmful situation?

Additionally, some FOIA exemptions we don’t think make any sense at all, like the complete carve-out the financial industry was able to score for itself, yet another unfortunate example of Wall Street’s outsized influence on our nation’s democracy. FOIA was enacted for the purpose of ensuring an informed citizenry and allowing the public to hold the government accountable for the actions it chooses to take and chooses not to take in light of the information available to it. It’s time for Congress to re-calibrate FOIA to undo the trend that has only worsened in the Trump administration that puts the wishes of corporations to shield their information ahead of the good of the nation.

In a recent example from our litigation department, Public Citizen requested information to see what FOIA requests had been submitted to the Department of Labor (DOL) about certain reports having to do with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s survey of employers about the number of women and minorities they employ. DOL tried to stretch the definition of “law enforcement records” (Exemption 7 of FOIA) to include whether or not there was a FOIA request open. We won that lawsuit.

Limiting Fee Waivers

Under the FOIA law, public interest groups who will use information to aid in the public’s understanding of government are supposed to get a fee waiver for the costs of searching for and copying the information. However, recently, our lawyers have been getting more pushbacks from agencies trying to still charge groups like ours fees. For example, we requested information about costs of travel and personal security for both U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary, Ben Carson, and former HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan. HUD denied our public interest fee waiver. We sued, and HUD produced the documents and did not charge us fees. Likewise the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau tried to deny us our public interest fee waiver and once tried to classify us as a “commercial” requestor, but in those instances the agency reversed the decision to charge fees when we appealed.

Shortchanging FOIA Staffing

Even though agencies are reportedly on pace to receive record numbers of FOIA requests, it’s not clear that agencies have taken necessary measures to ensure that they have adequate staff to comply with FOIA’s statutory deadlines. So, we hope that members of House Oversight and Reform Committee inquire into staffing levels to ensure they are not dropping off. We also urge them to make sure that the Trump administration is not using FOIA implementation at agencies as some sort of political payback for federal workers who served under Obama as it is reported is happening at some agencies. Considering the vital role the FOIA role plays in protecting the public interest, no one should be denigrating the important work these federal professionals provide by attempting to characterize the position as “punishment.”

Rulemaking That Would Violate FOIA

A government study from last fall showed that some agencies not updated their internal guidance documents to implement the FOIA improvements from 3 years ago. Although sometimes there is need for an agency to update its regulations regarding FOIA processing, such as to implement statutory changes to FOIA, the Department of the Interior (DOI), which is charged with overseeing the nation’s natural resources, including our National Parks, is going a huge step beyond that by proposing FOIA regulations that would actually violate the letter of the law. For example, under FOIA, agencies have a 20 work day deadline (30 work days in unusual circumstances) to make determinations about the request for information and must make records “promptly available” following that determination. But, the DOI is attempting to limit on the number of records that an individual or group will receive in response to its requests every month. Additionally, in its proposed rule, DOI tried to recast FOIA’s statutory deadlines for making a determination about the information request to a mushier “time frame” concept that is contrary to the response requirements clearly laid out in FOIA. And, though forwarding requests within agencies is addressed in both the language of FOIA and in guidance interpreting it, the DOI wants to remove this requirement so that a person who accidentally sends a FOIA request to the wrong part of the agency would be out of luck.

Another way the DOI looks to be trying to improperly limit its responsibilities through the newly proposed rule would be to not provide information when records would “require research.” But, courts have been clear over the years that records must only be “reasonably described,” not provide specifics on discrete actions of the agency. It would violate FOIA if the agency’s definition of “research” includes looking into which documents are responsive, a clear part of their job in administering FOIA.

Given what a radical departure this Department of Interior propose rule is from the spirit of open government laws, it’s not surprising that a bipartisan group of lawmakers has weighed-in with the agency asking it to reconsider its proposed rule.

 

Unfortunately, ever since the law was passed, FOIA has needed champions to make sure it is not being ignored or wrongly applied. It’s great to see Congressman Cummings at the reins of an unleashed Oversight and Reform Committee full of fresh lawmakers ready to challenge the overly corporate-influenced status quo—including when it comes to protecting the public’s right-to-know this Sunshine Week.

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Shining a Light on Democracy

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Sunshine Week—the week-long, nationwide tribute to transparency and open government laws—is starting off on a great note this year since the “For the People Act” passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday by a vote of 234 – 193. Given the bill number “H.R. 1” to show the House’s top priority of cleaning up corruption and strengthening our voting system, the bill would drastically improve citizens’ experience at the ballot box while reducing corporate influence on democracy. What some people might not know, though, is that H.R. 1 was also about improving transparency and letting the “disinfectant” of sunshine in on the workings of government.

To kick-off Sunshine Week, here is an overview of several provisions in the “For the People Act” passed by the House that would greatly increase transparency if signed into law:

Disclosure of Presidential and Vice-Presidential Tax Returns

Public Citizen and our members and supporters were very active in the Tax March events that took place across the country almost two years ago demanding that Donald J. Trump disclose his tax returns to the American people. Unfortunately, he didn’t heed the call, despite all previous presidents for the past 40-plus years having voluntarily done so. U.S. House Democrats, led by Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.), included in the “For the People Act” a requirement that candidates for presidential and vice-presidential office, and officeholders of those positions, disclose their individual tax returns.

However, because of President Trump’s vast personal business interests, it was clear that simply getting individual tax returns for presidents, vice-presidents and candidates for those offices wouldn’t give a full enough picture of possible conflicts of interest. Through the work of Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) who offered a Manager’s Amendment as the bill was being voted on, championed by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, (D-Wash.) co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the original language of the legislation was expanded to include business tax returns as well.

As a side note, since it’s definitely not likely that President Trump would sign H.R. 1, to get these presidential and vice-presidential tax returns, in the short term because of the urgent need, it’s up to the House Ways & Means Committee to request them, something it is expected to do shortly. Though reportedly the request will only first focus on individual tax returns, which would greatly hamper the ability to document where the president personally gains for the laws he is signing—and promoting. That certainly was the case with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the 2017 tax law that, among other giveaways to the rich, gave a 20 percent tax deduction to “pass-through” businesses like LLCs, the structure most of his businesses happen to be set up as. Oh, by the way, real estate LLCs got extra special treatment under the deduction. These instances of self-dealing go to show now’s the time to pull back the curtain on those tax returns and let some sunshine in!

Political Spending Disclosure

Corporations are not required at present to disclose how much they spend influencing elections, or which candidates they supported with shareholder funds. This poses many problems for investors, who need to have a full picture of the risks facing companies, including risks to reputation from supporting candidates or ideas that turns away their customers. Moreover, when it comes to government contractors, this lack of transparency creates a specific concern that those corporations could be using contributions to certain entities that support certain lawmakers in order to grease the wheels to getting awarded contracts. Thus, the fact that H.R. 1 requires companies or other entities to disclose details of their political spending when it exceeds $10,000 will provide some needed sunshine on government contractors—along with all other politically-active companies.

H.R. 1 would largely bring an end to secret campaign spending, “dark money,” by requiring that outside groups – including nonprofit organizations that attempt to hide the sources of their funds behind the tax code – reveal all their significant funders that help pay for electioneering activity. The top funders of a campaign ad would also be identified in the ad itself. And those who pay for campaign ads on the Internet – a favorite dark money form of advertising by foreign sources – would also be disclosed to the public.

And, until this bill makes into law, Public Citizen will remain a leader in the work to use other means to put in place political spending disclosure—through supporting shareholder resolutions, advocating for the petition for rulemaking to the Securities and Exchange Commission that received a record-number of comments in support, among other campaigns. But, it definitely was a huge step forward for transparency to have this provision be passed by the House as part of H.R. 1.

Other Transparency Measures

Another component of the “For the People Act” legislation would require full disclosure and no personal use of funds that have been raised for a presidential inauguration. It’s critical to have more information about what parties are seeking to influence the president from the very start of her or his presidency by funding lavish inaugural festivities. This commonsense ideas is compounded by the fact that President Donald Trump is currently under investigation for some mysteriously unexplained $50 million in expenditures by his inaugural committee.

Yet another transparency provision in H.R. 1 requires a public portal for posting of Congressionally-mandated reports so that the public will also have access to one form of the research the government is using for its decision-making. Right now thousands of reports are being shielded from the public’s eye, so this is a very positive move toward making more government-held information available.

H.R. 1 is an expansive piece of legislation that has many requirements that would add additional transparency to our democratic system: It would provide paper back-up ballots for elections to better shine the light on election outcomes, it would require clear disclosures on online political ads, and other reforms to provide more information to the public and shed more light on the state of our democracy.

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As Public Citizen and our allies celebrate Sunshine Week this week, we urge the public to support shining a light on secret campaign contributions, exposing presidential conflicts of interest, and revealing other information that is being kept from voters. Please call your U.S. senators and ask for them to become original co-sponsors of the “For the People Act.” Democracy cannot thrive in the shadows.

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The Wall Street Tax Act Would Crack Down on Dangerous High-Speed Trading and Reduce Inequality

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Taxing millionaires and billionaires in order to fund ambitious programs for a more just society with less inequality has been a hot issue in recent weeks. Between high-profile proposals such as Sen. Warren’s proposed wealth tax and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s plan to substantially raise the top marginal tax rate, high-profile proposals to correct our unjust inequality have been getting plenty of media attention and have been the topic of much public debate.

Part of the reason for for that is that the list of problems that need tackling in this nation seems to grow by the minute: teachers are protesting the lack of adequate funding in their schools, children are facing the threat of unsafe drinking water and roads in such disrepair potholes are damaging vehicles. Federal tax dollars can and should be part of the solution to addressing these and other obstacles facing Americans and to minimizing economic inequality everywhere. That’s why it’s fantastic to see the huge amount of public support for policies that would sharply increase taxes on millionaires and billionaires. We should be thinking big when it comes to these proposals.

But unrigging the tax system means more than taxing the superrich or undoing the corporate giveaways in the 2017 tax law. The tax debate also must focus on making Wall Street high rollers pay their fair share by putting a sales tax on financial transactions like stock, bond and derivative trades. That’s why Public Citizen applauds Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) as well as Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and colleagues for today introducing the Wall Street Tax Act of 2019. This brand new legislation proposes a financial transaction tax (FTT) that would apply a 0.1 percent fee (10 cents out of every $100) on the trading of stocks, bonds and derivatives. We were joined by 60 other organizations from faith to labor to climate groups that endorsed the Wall Street Tax Act legislation introduced today.

Passing the Wall Street Tax Act would have the dual benefits of raising revenue to pay for the kinds of ambitious programs we need to create a more just society, and also curbing bad behavior on Wall Street. Specifically, the bad behavior that an FTT would check is high-speed trading.

High-frequency trading is the superfast computer trading that has overtaken the market. It was high-speed trading that contributed to the market instability we have seen over the past few months. Because the profit from high-speed trading comes from being able to make trades a split second faster than the competition, putting a tiny tax on trading will steer activity away from these investment strategies that narrowly chase short-term gains over long-term value creation.

In addition to cracking down on this dangerous high-speed trading, the proposal’s revenue generation is nothing to sneeze at either. According to government estimates, it would raise nearly $777 billion over 10 years. After being in place for a few years, a Wall Street tax at a rate of 0.1 percent would bring in more than $100 billion per year. In one year, that could pay for more than a million teaching, clean energy or infrastructure jobs. It could fund a year of more than 11 million Head Start spaces, health care for more than 42 million low-income kids, or health care for 9 million veterans. Or, that amount could pay the way to four-year colleges for more than 3 million students. Moreover, it could be put toward mitigating climate change or investing in rebuilding the infrastructure our society desperately needs. The list of possible investments is endless.

Given the many benefits from taxing financial transactions, it’s not surprising that around 40 other countries have them in place. In fact, the U.S. already has an (albeit very small) trading fee in place that funds some of the operations of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This would just put in place a more robust, expanded version of an existing tax.

It was more than a decade ago when Wall Street recklessness crashed the economy, but some hardworking families are still struggling to regain their footing. Yet banks are making record profits and cashing in from the generous tax cuts they received—all while buying back their own stock.

Standing up to the financial industry will take vision and commitment. Hopefully, all members of Congress will see the potential and join Sen. Schatz, Sen. Van Hollen, Rep. DeFazio, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and their colleagues in calling to use Wall Street’s dime to rebuild Main Street.

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Exposing the Tax Scam, One Year In: Christmas Came Early for Corporations and the Rich

One year ago, as many Americans were in the midst of holiday celebrations and preparations, Congress and President Donald Trump stuffed the stockings of corporations and the super-rich with tax giveaway goodies. Despite the hard-fought efforts of Public Citizen and our allies, the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act”, signed into law one year ago today, contains innumerable items from the 1%’s wish list. Here we catalogue the top five undeserved presents gifted to corporations and the wealthy.

1. Sweets for lobbyists

Our “Swamped” report showed how much corporate America was investing in making sure their holiday wishes came to fruition: more than 60 percent of the registered lobbyist in D.C. lobbied on the bill. That’s 7,088 lobbyists in total. Industries like Big Pharma and financial firms topped the list of lobbyists by number and ended up as some of the tax bill’s most handsomely-rewarded sectors.

2. Globetrotting profits

Certainly getting a round-the-world vacation for a holiday present would probably be the best gift most of us could imagine. That’s just what corporate profits got when last year’s tax giveaway plan included a provision that worsened the problem of multinational corporations stashing their profits on the books of their foreign subsidiaries incorporated in tax haven nations. Now, the taxes multinational companies pay on the profits made in other countries is at most half of what corporations pay on profits made in the U.S. And, the more physical operations corporations have overseas, the less they pay. Some workers are already feeling the hurt- like the GM workers who got a pink slip for their holiday “present.”

3. An economy further rigged without care

Billionaires and other who’s who of Whoville made out like the Grinch in last year’s tax bill and sucked up even more wealth into their overstuffed moneybags. Not only did the bill lower the top tax rate that the richest folks have to pay, multimillionaires and their heirs now have more money to grab. The value of gifts and inheritances that won’t be subject to tax were doubled — up to $11 million and $22 million for couples.

4. Heaping helping of self-dealing

Politicians, especially those that like the Trump make a lot of their money through LLCs and other entities known as “pass-throughs,” gave themselves a great gift when they included a huge deduction for those types of companies in last year’s tax bill. Until Trump’s tax returns are disclosed, we cannot know the extent to which he and his family personally benefitted from the tax changes—but it’s clear the Trumps saved a huge amount. Luckily, the incoming House leadership have pledged to address disclosures the President’s tax returns as one of the first items on their agenda for the new Congress and the Ways & Means committee plans to request his tax return information as well.

5. The “gift” that keeps on “giving”

It is clear workers didn’t get the actual gift they were promised from the tax bill—a magical $4,000 check. Instead, corporations self-gifted stock buybacks to boost investors’ stock values and CEOs’ resulting bonuses. Unfortunately, like a phantom from A Christmas Carol, the harmful outcomes of the bill will likely haunt working Americans for Christmases yet to come. The Affordable Care Act’s requirement for insurance is gone because of the bill, meaning an estimated 13 million Americans will end up being pushed out of insurance while premiums will increase for the rest of us. And, the tax giveaways tied a huge red bow on the top of the federal deficit by increasing it by $2 trillion. And, the naughty boys and girls in Congress want to use these budget shortfalls to enact miserly cuts to critical government services like Medicare, public education, and nutrition assistance. Moreover, come Tax Day 2019, a large number of us might be receiving a tax bill instead of a return because of under withholding.

So, here’s to ringing in the New Year with a new tax plan that discloses Trump’s tax returns, repeals the giveaways to corporations and the wealthy, and that prioritizes growing new revenues (for example, by taxing Wall Street trades) in order to invest in American communities to create a just country for all of us.

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