President Trump and his family stand to pocket more than $1 billion under the Republican tax plan passed by the House on Thursday, NBC News reports.
Trump himself would save more than $20 million, and his heirs more than $1.1 billion, mostly through the proposed repeal of the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax. NBC commissioned an analysis based on Trump’s publicly available 2005 tax return and his estimated net worth.
Trump and his family would benefit most from the bill’s elimination of the estate tax by 2024. Currently, the heirs to an estate worth more than $5.5 million for a single person and $11 million for a married couple must pay a 40% tax on the estate.
“Provided that Donald and Melania are still living at that time, the combined estates of Donald Trump and [his wife] will save $400 million of federal estate tax for every billion dollars of net assets,” said Maury Cartine, a tax expert at Marcum LLP. Trump’s net worth is estimated at $2.86 billion, so that savings comes to $1.1 billion by 2024.
Cartine said that based on Trump’s 2005 tax return, he would save $31 million from the repeal of the alternative minimum tax, although post-2005 changes to the tax code would reduce that savings to about $22.6 million.
The Republican tax plan, which now heads to the Senate, has been criticized for mainly benefiting the wealthy. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimated the average tax cut to be nearly $1,000 by 2027. But the Top 1 percent of all taxpayers would save more than $62,000, and the top 0.1 percent would see a tax cut of $320,000.
Trump has insisted he would not benefit from the Republicans’ tax bill. “It’s not good for me. Believe me,” he said on Sept. 27. “My plan is for the working people, and my plan is for jobs. I don’t benefit.” Earlier this month, Trump told a group of Democratic senators, “My accountant called me and said ‘you’re going to get killed in this bill.’”
