Big Store Bosses Estimated To Have Saved $41m From Trump Tax Law
Chief executives of the nation’s top nine retailers are estimated to have saved up to $41 million from just one provision of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law that was recently permanently extended
Chief executives of the nation’s top nine retailers are estimated to have saved up to $41 million from just one provision of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law that was recently permanently extended, according to a new analysis by Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) in a continuing series on industry executives’ tax savings. These CEOs’ savings will presumably continue under the newly extended Trump-GOP tax law passed this summer, with the amount of tax avoided going up with their compensation. Retail prices over the seven years of the study (2018-24) jumped by over a quarter, or 26%, causing consumers to struggle at the cash register even as retail’s big bosses were pocketing millions in tax savings.
Retailer CEOs with enormous salaries don’t need tax relief–it’s their customers who need relief from the price gouging by the big stores those bosses run. The huge savings for retail’s top execs is another clear indication of who the Republican tax law was really meant to serve.
The single provision of the 2017 law reflected in the study is the cut in individual income-tax rates. Due to the way tax brackets work, the CEOs benefitted from the reduction in all the rates. But because their total compensation packages were all so high–they collectively were paid almost $1.6 billion over the seven-year span–the real boost in their take-home pay came from the cut in the top rate from 39.6% to 37%. That top rate doesn’t kick in for a married couple in 2025 until their income reaches over roughly three-quarters of a million dollars (the amount is adjusted each year for inflation).
SOURCE: Americans for Tax Fairness
“Ordinary” income is for most people their wages or salary, but also includes other types like interest and rent. The two most important forms of investment income–long-term capital gains and dividends, which top corporate executives tend to get a lot of–are taxed under a different system that was unaffected by the 2017 law and are therefore not included in the study.
The four highest-paid retail CEOs in the study–Amazon’s Andrew R. Jassy, Walmart’s C. Douglas McMillon, Dollar General’s Todd J. Vasos and Target’s Brian C. Cornell–each received around a quarter billion dollars in compensation over the first seven years of the Trump law. The lower tax rates alone could have saved each of them over $6 million. The lowest-paid retailing boss in the study, Corie Barry of Best Buy, was still paid almost $70 million and could have pocketed nearly two million dollars in tax savings over those seven years.