TaxTop1.com

Rationale

Trump's tax cuts in his first term didn't address balancing the budget, but sent America into debt for the rich disproportionately, with an average of more than $60,000 in savings for the top 1% of earners while the bottom 60% of earners saw less than a $500 decrease in their tax bill [1] This round of cuts will not only beguile Americans to think there's equality in tax cuts, but also fool most that the budget cuts will fix everything. Use the slider to change the effective taxation on the top 1% and corporations to correspond with potential program funding and cuts. The slider moves leftward to fund utopian government support programs and to the right social welfare programs are decimated along with the leagues of population who depend on them. The effective tax rate that you can adjust below is not possible to legislate directly, however introducing minimum taxes similar to the Buffett Rule decreasing tax avoidance while still incentivizing helpful economic business spending and deductions.

Methodology

Revenue

It is important to note that the percentage the slider adjusts is an average of the tax effective rate of the top 1% (26.9%) based on the tax year of 2021 (latest year with comprehensive data) and that of corporations (12.8%). [2] The infographic's calculation assumes no change in deficit spending, however the 2025 budget resolution passed in February increases the deficit up to $4,500,000,000,000 for 2025 through 2034. [3]

There's discrepancy among sources for what the effective tax rate of corporations really is as in the following 2 excerpts, but the higher average was used: 

• America’s largest, consistently profitable corporations saw their effective tax rates fall from an average of 22.0 percent to an average of 12.8 percent after the Trump tax law went into effect in 2018. [4]

• The government accountability office actually lists "Average effective tax rates—the percentage of income paid after tax breaks—among profitable large corporations fell from 16% in 2014 to 9% in 2018." [5] 

In the age of DOGE many do not know that a government accountability office already existed and they are more systematically looking out for fraud which it does not downplay with estimates of 233 to 521 billion annually. [6]

It is true that the top 1% accounts for a large majority, certainty of income tax revenue, whereas they dio not for payroll taxes like social security, and Medicare. This top percentile of earners paid an average of $653,730 in income taxes per return, compared to the overall average of $14,279 paid by all taxpayers [2]. The income threshold one must be catapulted over to rank in the top 1% is $682,570 adjusted gross income. [2] Thus, the infographic assumes not-mentioned programs are funded by not-mentioned revenue sources, displaying the solo power of the top 1% and corporation's tax revenue.

Programs and Potential Spending

Looking carefully at potential utopian government programs, they've already been implemented in a large number of other countries. However, often governments are spending less per capita on healthcare namely to provide universal healthcare [7]. More discrete utopian programs and their funding amounts were purposely listed not because they would be likely or the very best investments for the country right now, but because a simple taxation change for such a low percentage of the country exemplifies how feasible great change could be. Yet, the implementation could make the New Deal look like choir practice. 

A National Institute of Health study projected the United States funded $3.642 trillion, a 2/3rds majority, of healthcare costs in 2024. [7] Spending done strictly by states could be removed from this but was left in this total and amounted to 392.7 billion. It's a hard number to fathom, but if the remaining 32.9% of healthcare costs were paid by the U.S. federal government, the increased expense would be 1 trillion 69 billion. It hard to calculate more accurately what universal healthcare would cost, however looking at Canada, their healthcare costs per capita are roughly half of what the United States pays. The study points out demography, Medicaid expansion and Medicare enrollment, but exorbitant and oppressive healthcare costs have a role. Canada also reimburses a similar proportion of healthcare costs, 70.7%, yet healthcare is provided for their citizens. [7]

The North Atlantic Rail project proposal clocks in at a $105 billion cost over 10 years. This would connect Washington DC to Boston and have intersecting lines running from New York City to Buffalo, NY and Philadelphia to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania [8]. Roughing in that number as a 10th of a potential national infrastructure project gives us that same cost per year for 10 years.

Childcare can cost between $8,000 to $17,000 a year. [9] We can take the average of $12,500 and while there are 71.5 million children of all ages in the USA,  a more applicable number would be that 70% of children under 6 years-old have all available parents in the workforce. [16] That gives us 14.7 million children multiplied by the $12500/year would cost $182,500,000,000 for universal childcare.

For affordable housing expansion, this is typically done through low income tax credit housing where private developers abide by government rules and reap tax savings tantamount to the cost of building the units to own and profit from. With more tax revenue the government could take more of a driving force in owning and operating outright. Wide estimates unbelievably place the cost of acquisition and development of a government housing unit to be between $200,000 and $400,000. [10] The annual operating costs are at a median of $7,000 per unit annually, but with rental income is a modest rent-controlled $10,594 per unit, per year from a $882/month rent. The government would then net profit $3594 yearly per unit which pales in comparison to the cost of acquisition, yet the wealth of the 1% makes this totally approachable. Averaging these sets of numbers, the nationwide demand for affordable housing is approximately 7 million units. [11] The cost of 7 million units at $300,000 each divided over 15 years means investing $140 billion a year annually. Then, cumulatively adding profit of about 1.677 billion stacking year on year for 15 years would equal 1.899 trillion. Then divide this over over 15 years equates to 126.5 billion yearly to meet current affordable housing demand.

A Last-Dollar-Tuition-Free program to provide people free college after grants has been well studied to be of a 10 year annualized cost of implementation of $38.7 billion. [12]

Program Cuts

The DOGE section of spending cuts were figures reported from ABC news on February 23rd 2025. [13] More transparent numbers would be ideal, but despite the self-reported transparency, the DOGE website is a dizzying serial string of embedded X.com postings and misinterpretations. If the text goes further than the preview you can't expand it without going to X.com. Later on, DOGE reported cuts at the Department of Education of $881 million where investigators only substantiated a minority of them -- 278 Million. [14] Realistically, further hypothetical cuts would be graduated cuts like many are speculating would be of the $800 billion to Medicaid over the next 10 years. This has been a common assumption, however Medicare or other sources of healthcare fall into the same category on the congressional budget resolution. [3] For demonstration to show if income tax on the top 1% and corporations were to be allocated to the other proposed hypothetical cuts while other tax revenue paid for expenditures, it shows the power of the top 1% and corporations to the fund large segments of government with mere percentage points. [15]

References

[1] https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/model-estimates/conference-agreement-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act-dec-2017/t17-0314-conference-agreement

[2] https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-income-tax-data-2024/

[3] https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-concurrent-resolution/14/text

[4] https://itep.org/corporate-taxes-before-and-after-the-trump-tax-law/ 

[5] https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-105384 Effective tax rate of corporations

[6] https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-105833

[7].https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4880216/

[8].https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_the_United_States

[9] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/10/25/5-facts-about-child-care-costs-in-the-us/ 

[10] https://www.hellodata.ai/help-articles/affordable-housing-operating-costs/

[11] https://nlihc.org/explore-issues/why-we-care

[12] https://educationdata.org/how-much-would-free-college-cost/

[13] https://abcnews.go.com/US/doge-claims-55-billion-government-cuts-figure-hard/story?id=118966190 

[14] https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/edcentral/doge-dodges-the-truth-about-wasteful-spending/

[15] https://usafacts.org/government-spending/  tax revenue on corporations, $530 Billion

[16] https://www.americanprogress.org/article/a-2024-review-of-child-care-and-early-learning-in-the-united-states/

[17] https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-individual-statistical-tables-by-tax-rate-and-income-percentileTable 4.1. Column F Row 20 is 2021 Total Tax revenue from the top 1%

P.S. Elon Musk's company Tesla has a effective tax rate of 0.7% but with the research and development deduction surely sought in upcoming tax legislation this particular corporation would have an effective tax rate of -22% effectively subsidizing his corporation.