Don't Let Trump Repeal The EIC (Head Of House Hold) In his new Tax plan that hurts Families and C...

To see how this tax increase would work in real life, consider a single mother who makes $34,000 a year with two teenage children, ages 14 and 17. Right now, she gets a $9,300 standard deduction by filing as a head of household. She also gets three exemptions for herself and her two children of $4,050 each, for a total reduction of $12,150. Altogether, the standard deduction and personal exemptions reduce her taxable income to $12,550. This is taxed at a 10 percent rate, so her tax bill comes to $1,255.Under Trump, the same single mother gets a larger $15,000 standard deduction, but $0 in personal exemptions, which brings her taxable income to $19,000. This means significantly more of her income is subject to taxes compared to current law, expanding her bill. Moreover, Trump taxes this income at 12 percent instead of 10 percent, which results in a tax obligation of $2,280 — $1,025 more than what she owes now.Since her children are too old for Trump’s child care deduction — which is limited to children under the age of 13 — it wouldn’t help her at all. The good news is that since she benefits from the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit for working families, she should still get a tax refund. The bad news is that her tax refund would be $1,025 less under the Trump plan than it would be under current law, since her higher tax obligation under Trump’s plan has to be deducted from the refund.At the same time, Trump would give huge tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans: The top income tax rate paid by millionaires and billionaires would drop from 39.6 percent to 33 percent. And Trump repeals the estate tax, which could mean a tax cut of up to $4 billion for his own family. But repealing the estate tax won’t matter for the struggling single mother, since only the richest 0.2 percent of estates pay any estate taxes.The huge cost of Trump’s plan also jeopardizes the funding necessary to sustain vital middle-class investments such as Medicare, education, and infrastructure. This is the most important reason that the Trump tax plan would hurt middle-class families. But even when Trump claims that they’ll benefit from his tax cuts, his plan still sticks many struggling families with a tax increase that could be devastating.