Top Bankers May Have Saved $53 Million From Trump Tax Law

Dozen Bank CEOs Would Have Benefitted from Lower Tax Rate on $2 Billion Pay Will Save Millions More Now That Rate Has Been Extended

The top dozen American bank executives may have saved almost $53 million on their personal taxes from just one provision of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law that was recently extended with the support of their powerful trade association. That’s the finding of the latest report in a series from Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) on the personal tax savings of industry executives. 

The 2025 tax-and-spending law gives most of its tax breaks to rich people like bankers, kicks millions off medical and food aid, and adds trillions of dollars to the national debt. Thanks to the law’s permanent extension of the 2017 individual tax breaks, top bankers are set to enjoy tens of millions of dollars more in tax savings in coming years. 

“America’s financial titans were banking on retaining the Trump-GOP tax law that may have saved them nearly $53 million from just one break – and their lobbying succeeded,” said David Kass, ATF’s executive director. “The huge bonanzas enjoyed by the nation’s top bank CEOs is emblematic of who the Republican law was really meant to benefit–and who it will benefit now that it’s been extended. Millions of workers and families will lose healthcare and food assistance, but at least the bankers will be well paid!”

The component of the 2017 law that may have saved the dozen bank CEOs collectively almost $53 million over the law’s first seven years is the reduction in ordinary-income tax rates. Though they benefit from all the rate reductions, the bankers’ income is so large–they were paid altogether more than $2 billion over that seven-year stretch–that the rate that matters most is the top one, which was cut from 39.6% to 37%. That top rate only applied to income over roughly $730,000 per couple in 2024, the last year of the study. The cut to all the rates cost some $1.2 trillion in lost revenue over 10 years; the recent permanent extension of those cuts will cost another $2.2 trillion.

Source: Americans for Tax Fairness

“Ordinary” income is for most people their wages or salary, but also includes other types like interest and rent. While bank CEOs are sure to have a lot of the two most important forms of investment income–long-tem capital gains and dividends–those are taxed under a different system that was unaffected by the 2017 law. 

The highest-paid bank CEO in the study, JP Morgan Chase’s James Dimon, received nearly a half billion dollars ($487 million) in ordinary-income compensation over the first seven years of the Trump law. The lower tax rates alone could have saved him almost $13 million. The lowest-paid banker in the study, Robin Vince of the Bank of New York Mellon, still made over $39 million and could have pocketed over a million dollars in tax savings over those seven years. 

METHODOLOGY: Public corporations regularly report the compensation of their top executives, but individual tax-return data is not made public. Actual tax savings from the lowered rates would depend on the filing status and taxable income of each taxpayer in each year. Taxable income in turn depends on deductions, credits and other adjustments to gross income. Tax savings shown here are the maximum possible.