Trump’s ‘No Tax on Tips’ Claim Doesn’t Add Up

Filed 1d ago · Via FactCheck.org · The Buffoon Desk

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Maple Leaf Rag

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

President Trump has repeatedly claimed that tipped workers in Nevada and Georgia saved $10,000 and $7,000 respectively on their taxes because of his no-tax-on-tips policy, attributing the figures to unspecified government data.

FactCheck.org found no federal source for those specific savings numbers; the figures track more closely with average deduction amounts reported by Treasury and the White House itself, which never called those numbers tax savings.

Tax experts note that a deduction only reduces taxable income, not tax owed dollar-for-dollar, and estimate realistic average savings in the hundreds to low thousands of dollars — a fraction of what the president has claimed at podiums in both states.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

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There is a difference between what you deduct and what you save, and it is the sort of difference a president touting a tax policy might reasonably be expected to know before saying a number out loud in two separate states. The tell is that the figure never shrinks under questioning; real numbers have error bars, applause lines have momentum. Whatever the workers actually got, they can console themselves with the knowledge that somewhere, a decimal point is doing heroic unpaid labor on their behalf.

Source: Read the original at FactCheck.org → Scored: Maple Leaf Rag · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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